idle chatter

Lately I've been thinking, and by lately I mean the last 17 or 18 years, about  the affliction that many of us have, but few are willing to talk about. A fact which is itself a bit of a mystery, when you consider that people will openly admit to all manner of hideous acts, latent desires and an entire array of pure stupidity.  Many of these being admitted to strangers on busses or to television audiences.  It seems you have really get to know a person, and then one day out of the clear blue sky, they will admit that they have word-a-phobe.  Just the other day as I swooned over particularly beautiful plant at the Farmer's market, my friend giggled, but refused to say the name of the plant(clematis) due to it's perceived similarity to a certain STD. She confessed to hiding her fear for years.  Another friend recoiled in disgust when the word bulbous was used in reference to her toes,  which honestly bear a striking resemblance to very thin men in old fashioned diving helmets.  Another friend simply can not abide the word moist, and so her entire extended family endeavors to bring up topics like cake, and how it was not dry at all, the condition of their armpits, or towelets.  My best friend despises cheese and cites some early childhood sandwich, with thick slices of sharp cheddar,  prepared for her by her auntie (not the same one who served her horse meat) as her reason.   Her husband hates clowns, although I suspect that it is more a fear, that and he has an aversion to makeup, but I digress... For my part, I hate the creepy little word of "pym" I had to close my eyes to type that.  I hate it for it's wimpyness, for the fact that they couldn't even scrape up enough courage to use the letter "i" I mean "i" is not exactly a tough or overly intense letter.  What a bunch of creeps!  Ok now I have that off my chest, I feel a flood of relief washing over me, like a tidal wave of pre moistened lysol wipes.  Now, where once grew bulbous, carbuncles of fear and loathing, clematis blooms in my heart.  There is  a street in Nanimo B.C. named Pym St. so maybe me and all my similarly afflicted friends should go there and shout "the words" out loud, thereby releasing it into the air and in turn releasing ourselves from the stranglehold we have been suffering from in silence.  Or if you too have word-a-phobe you could just go to Nanimo and write it in a slip of paper and tape it to the road sign, symbolicly  leaving your fear there and moving forward... at the very least, knock the stupid sign over.  On a less serious note, I saw a clown bang his head during a trapeze act at the circus when I was 4, and he just fell to the ground, and never moved again.  An attempt was made to divert out attention to one of the other rings, but to be honest, it is pretty hard to ignore some dead clown sprawled out in the sawdust.  Being the type of kid I was I made a mental note that although I admired the attempt at a glamorous death, I felt that he lost points on his outfit, and the distasteful way that he landed.  And that is pretty much life, even the best laid plans can sometimes go awry.