Happy Friday the 13th, yet again!

So we have come to yet another Friday the 13th…and it is funny how it affects some people. I will purposely wear black on the day, just to generate the discussion of superstitions or the question of if I am afraid of bad luck by wearing the macabre color on this date. Here are some fun facts to fill your day:

· What is there to be afraid of? Paraskevidekatriaphobia, the fear of Friday the 13th, perhaps? If you were to consult a complete list of phobias, apparently everything. There are nearly as many phobias as there are nouns; just attach a Greek prefix to -phobia and you’re off to the fear factory.
· The most common phobias are zoophobias, which are anxieties about animals. Bats, rats, dogs and cats all make the list. The general fear of insects is very common, as is fear of mice. The two animals most likely to give the willies, though, are spiders and snakes. Seven percent of the population has a zoophobia, and women are three times more likely to be afflicted.
· The five most common phobias are:1. Fear of snakes (ophidiophobia)2. Fear of giving a speech (glossophobia)3. Fear of heights (acrophobia)4. Fear of rodents (musophobia)5. Fear of flying (aviophobia)

Following closely are phobias about confined spaces, thunder, nighttime and dogs.

· There is an exceedingly long list of “specific phobias,” covering everything from body hair to buttered biscuits. Many of them sound pretty funny so long as you’re not the one with the anxiety attack. Sure, it’s amusing to think someone can be afraid of colors (chromophobia), but how do these people buy fruit?

Papaphobia—fear of the pope.
Scorodophobia—fear of garlic.
Pteronophobia—fear of being tickled with feathers.
Ranidaphobia—fear of frogs.
Philematophobia—fear of kissing.
Aulophobia—fear of flutes.
Ostraconophobia—fear of shellfish.
Graphophobia—fear of handwriting.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia—fear of long words (seriously).
Blennophobia—fear of slime.
Gerontophobia—fear of old people.
Peladophobia—fear of bald people.
Geropeladophobia—fear of old, bald people.
Phobophobia—fear of developing a fear.

There is also didaskaleinophobia, the fear of going to school—though you’d have to go if you want to pronounce it. Barophobia is the fear of gravity, which can be very inconvenient if you live on a planet.

·There is no shortage of movies made for the sole purpose of scaring the pants off of viewers (gymnophobia: fear of being caught naked), but no doubt a few flicks have actually instilled phobias. Jaws and Airport ’77 come readily to mind.

On occasion, feature films have pointed the camera eye at the phobias of lead characters.
Copycat: Sigourney Weaver plays a criminal psychologist who has a crippling fear of open spaces and is confined to her apartment, where she is terrorized by a serial killer.
Vertigo: A fear of heights preys on Jimmy Stewart after he sees a friend fall to his death. Hitchcock has a sadistically good time setting the climax in an old tower.
High Anxiety: Mel Brooks parodies Hitchcock in this “psycho-comedy,” set at the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous.
Arachnophobia: A small California town gets the creepy-crawlies when killer spiders make themselves at home.
Phobia: Patients of a psychiatrist are knocked off according to their phobias. This 1980 horror show begs the question, what do you call a fear of bad movies?

·Those of us who do suffer from such maladies can usually be left to bite our nails in private. Celebrities, of whom we must know everything, are not as lucky. In some cases, the phobia seems squarely at odds with a famous person’s identity:

Alfred Hitchcock psyched out the world with a knife-wielding, oedipal cross-dresser, but he was afraid of eggs.
Author Anne Rice has created generations of blood-sucking vampires who feast in the night, but she’s afraid of the dark.
Lyle Lovett is the living image of a songwriting Texas cowboy, but he’s afraid of cows. It’s not a stretch—he was trampled by a bull in 2002.

Donald Trump is celebrated as a world-class deal maker, but he has a fear of shaking hands.