It All Began When I tried to do Homework

A simple task, really, read an article, write a review and prepare a presentation for class. The topic is pretty basic, "does punishment reduce aggression?" I just got home a few minutes ago from class, actually 45 minutes, wow, what have I been doing for 30 minutes? Anyway, I got home took out the article to review and began writing notes on how I want to present. I went to the Internet to look some things up and came across a link for the top ten weird fears or something, from Merriam-Webster.com. Number seven stood out to me, Kakorrhaphiophobia, "An abnormal fear of failure." What struck me was the ridiculous name, and the fact that there is no way I could ever learn or remember to pronounce that word correctly. I have a kakorrhapiophobia of kakorrhaphiophobia. I'm not even going to try to say the word out loud because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get it correct. I never before have had an abnormal fear of failure, but I do now, thanks to this word. But doesn't that seem to be the way it is? I was never afraid of snakes until I learned that snakes could kill me, maybe that's not true, I think fear of snakes is, waaaiiiit foooorrr iiiittt...Ophidiophobia, that's number 8...instinctive. I didn't choose to be afraid of snakes, it chose me, or so it goes. A better example is people. I don't think babies are innately afraid of people. Well, maybe, they do seem to have an attachment thing going on where they cry in the presence of strangers and weird, unfamiliar smells, I think. Homework is a good example of a learned fear. When you are little you like school, it is fun, the teacher is nice, usually a grandmother or a 22 year old straight out of college, they are friendly and want to help you learn! When they ask you to take a worksheet home and fill it out you are more than happy to do that favor for them. After a few years, as the teachers change, as you change, as homework changes, you realize, this isn't a good thing. You then develop...I went to see if there was an abnormal fear of homework, there isn't, and then it hit me, this is a perfectly rational fear. Anyway, I'm done talking about fear, I'll now discuss another top ten list that distracted me while I was off on my distraction. Top ten new words for 2010. They were all inane and made me angry, but the worst was (no offense if you've been using this) aughties, as in the years between 2000 and 2009. Our great-grandparents used aught to describe the years between 1900 and 1909, i.e. "back in aught 6 I saw my first horseless carriage." When were cars invented? Never mind, it doesn't matter. The important thing is that they were. Right, aughts, so they used to say that, apparently some trendy web person submitted that as the term they and their cafe hang out friends use and a bunch of other trendy web people voted on it and the dictionary people thought it was solid gold so they put it in at number 10. Well, I'll tell you what I think of that: I don't care. I won't be calling it the aughties. Unless they get Ben McKenzie to say it on Southland, he's so cool.

P.S. Watch Southland on TNT, Tuesdays at 10/9c. If you miss it, catch the few most recent episodes on the Internet at Hulu.com (it will link you to TNT.TV) or TNT.tv/southland. Warning: due to excessive explicit language, mature themes and violent content, viewer discretion is advised. That being said, it is a fantastic show, very "real" seeming and delves into the characters rather than the procedures of police work. At least that's what the behind the scenes feature on the DVD said.