Phobias! Git ya Phobias!

Life has to be dull for people who take themselves too seriously. Having one or two things really worth being afraid of inspires self-mockery about things that might otherwise inspire fear.

My last explored what might be called arktophobia or ursophobia, fear of bears. It appears there's a persistent Interwebz error that it's Melissophobia, which is fear of bees. (A melissophobic bear would have a rough time getting honey.)

Pity it isn't melissophobia: that sounds like fear of perky people from Marketing.

When I was a kid, I had something very akin to acrophobia. This was inconvenient for a child who was regularly dragged up trees and mountains by an outdoorsy father. Several years' experience with chairlifts finally rubbed the gloss off this fear. What remains is enough common sense to be especially careful around sudden drops. I submit that, like ursophobia, this is a fear that can be tamed and put to good use.

Once my acrophobia was tamed, I learned to love flying in small planes, and tolerate it in large ones. My aerophobia (fear of flying) now is directed at the logistics of flying, and I find this rational. Most people forget that passenger rail in the USA did not reach its moribund state through competition as much as through a succession of self-inflicted injuries. One watches with horrified fascination as the airline industry repeats the same mistakes, and wonders what the next page of transport history will show us. Meantime, an airliner is merely a bus with wings, which is sometimes faster than a bus, sometimes not.

It would be a good thing if more Yosemite visitors had potamophobia: more of them would survive their visit. This one isn't fear of potties, but fear generally of open running water.

We must now add musophobia to the list of logical Yosemite phobias, since it seems to be opportunistic deer mice that have been spreading hantavirus around the Yosemite tent cabins. The media appears to be several weeks behind the National Park Service (NPS) in responding to this fear, and the latter have been engaged in the sort of anal-retentive disinfection (after the fact) that NPS is very good at. A little shaky on prevention, yeah, but awesome at crisis management.

When I come back I think I'll affect a cough for several weeks, or perhaps pass out dramatically in my beer.