i blame sesame street

i have many, many irrational fears. to list them all would be asking for trouble (translation: i do NOT want to have mysterious gifts sent to my house).

there is one particular fear, however, that i'd almost forgotten . . . if not for a local cooking show i saw this weekend. to give you an idea of what my fear is -- the cook on the show was kneading dough to make donuts (doughnuts, if you will) and put the dough lump in the middle of a greased basin . . .

(no, i'm not afraid of greased basins.)

do you know what happens to yeast-filled dough that has been left to rest?

IT RISES.

i first saw this phenomenon on sesame street when i was around 7 years old, and i haven't been the same since. must i explain the dread and panic that filled my tiny heart when i realized that dough, an inanimate object, can triple in size if you don't touch it!?!

if i were any wiser in my younger years, i would've stopped watching sesame street completely. who cares if it taught me how to read even before i entered school? that show was the source of many other childhood fears (which, i now realize, are really just variations of one general fear):

-- a fear that inanimate objects would eat me. this is why i hated sitting on a particular white chair we used to have. it always looked like it was hungry.

-- a fear of cotton. i used to be afraid it would attack my finger. i think this fear can be traced to the talking cloud that used to appear in prairie dawn's plays.

-- a fear of trees. i particularly disliked the "this is your life" sequences with guy smiley: a talking tree usually made an appearance in those segments. i also blame "the wizard of oz" (or was that an outtake?), what with the moving trees and all. up until high school, i had nightmares about our backyard trees invading my room.

-- a fear of talking food. there was an old mayonnaise commercial i absolutely hated. it had a talking ham sandwich. interestingly, my dad hated it too. maybe fears are genetically encoded.