Certain people are agonized by the most bizarre of things. From the fear of belly buttons to the fear of the number thirteen, humans have some odd fears and quirks. Some celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, for example, hold a fear of chewing gum, which originated when her grandmother started saving her chewed gum and sticking it to furniture.
Typical fears among teenagers include heights, spiders, aircrafts, and family issues such as divorce, but a select few students hold more unconventional phobias, like senior Meghana Gadiraju’s fear of cotton.
“It’s called sidonglobophobia. It makes this weird sound and the texture is so weird so every time I see a cotton ball being pulled apart or I have to touch one, I freak out and start grinding my teeth, trying to get that weird texture feeling to go away,” Gadiraju says.
Gadiraju recounts how her fear surfaced when she was just three years old. Her mom bought her a colorful tracksuit, and Gadiraju used to chew on the ends of the sleeves, which consisted of a very cottony material.
“I’m grinding my teeth now just thinking about it,” she says.
Psychologically, fears develop in early childhood to give children an adverse response to stimuli that may pose a danger to them, especially at an age when they are most vulnerable. Because of this, many unusual phobias develop because of a negative childhood experience, like Gadiraju’s experience with her cotton sweatsuit.
Junior Nora Liu has a fear of irregular patterns or clusters of small holes or bumps, known as trypophobia.
Liu says, “A friend tagged me in an Instagram post full of these disgusting pictures of irregular, tiny holes and it made me cringe so bad. I get shivers just thinking about it; it’s so disgusting … I experience trypophobia sometimes in real life, such as unwrapped straws [clustered together.] Those little circles freak me out. The only good thing is how the plastic wrapping on the straws prevents it from looking like the circles.”
Trypophobia research isn’t extensive, but according to Tech Insider, some scientists believe it may stem from an association with poisonous animals like octopi, which have small suction holes on the bottom of their tentacles.
Almost every human experiences some type of fear, but many phobias are more irrational than others — whether you’re afraid of the test you have in math class, or the circular arrangement of otherwise innocent straws.
I can totally relate to Nora. I first realized I had trypophobia when I got weirded out looking at a picture of Hyperion. It is a moon of Saturn that is described as “spongey”.