Your first test of torture...

“We have nothing to fear…”
By: RobinIsBoris


Everyone remembers being told that there is nothing to fear. Parents tell their children that there is nothing under the bed, no monster in the closet, and so on until the child is old enough to tell itself that there is nothing in the closet or whatever. But with all the horror movies, murder novels, and many other things with giant spiders or demon clowns involved it can be hard to remember and the one thing that “doesn’t exist” sure does seem to exist right about now.

Everyone has their fears. Heights, clowns, dentists, long words, other people… Things that do not seem scary to you will scare someone else into a coma. You have a certain fear that trumps all other fears and you know it. Something that just mentioning the word related to it will make you cry out and hide under the covers. Of course, you may not know what your ultimate fear is yet, but you do have alternatives that still scare you, and admitting that you do is the important thing.

The funny thing about fears, also called “phobias”, is that they always have an alternate Latin name that you will remember when you see your fear. Obviously, you don’t have verbophobia or you wouldn’t even be looking at this. Don’t get it? Verbophobia is the fear of words. If you’ve ever seen that one certain scene in the old movie “Mary Poppins” and covered your ears in fright you may have Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, or the fear of long words. For those evil enough and have a thing FOR words, use that in the next letter you send to someone that only use small words and watch them react.

Of course, I am not saying that you take what someone’s deepest fear is and use it for some easy comedy, no matter how fun it is and how much you will laugh. If you are a good friend you will try to keep those things away from the person. If you are an even better friend you will use it against the person until they say “I’m not scared of that anymore”, and then use it once more to test them. Only if they are truly unafraid should you stop messing with them. But if that does happen you should go out and find another fear to use against them and laugh at the resulting screams of terror that result from a successful job at finding the right fear.

No matter what happens, everyone will fear one thing or another. The only reason they aren’t scared of anything is because they haven’t seen the thing that scares them yet. If someone never goes to the beach and has never seen the epic movie “Jaws”, they will say they aren’t scared of sharks, but show them a single clip that includes the vicious killer and watch them change their opinions.