“It gives me the heebie jeebies...”

Dear Mum,

One of my closest friends is frightened of buttons.

Not any and every button – that would be bizarre. She doesn’t hyperventilate when walking through the button haven that is the Marks and Spencer knitwear section. But upon spotting buttons looking up from the gutter or abandoned and desolate at the bottom of desk draw and Sara becomes a quivering wreck.

A housemate from uni, on the other hand, was frightened of jelly, meaning at any house party serving jelly vodka shots Carrie would find refuge sitting on the stairs, out of sight of the wobbly sweet treats.

It was easy to forget this phobia. Once, when she was unwell with a ‘stomach upset’ (hangover) and I took her a cup of fresh water and some toast, I absentmindedly rambled “I tell you what always made me feel better. Jelly. My Mum would make big bowls of the stuff and I’d have portions throughout the day. I always got fed up of the plain taste of toast and craved something with flavour. Plus it slips down so easily. I tell you what, I need to nip out and get some milk, I’ll get you some if you like.”

I turned round to discover her crying.

Food dislikes are generally acceptable. If you don’t like a food there is nothing worse than being forced to eat it. Heart pounds, forehead moistens, nausea sweeps through the minute it touches your tongue.

One colleague revealed yesterday that visible chopped onion in a cooked dish and her stomach reels. If it is chopped finely and disguised by other ingredients she can eat the dish but, if this is not the case, she flees the room.

Allie explained her Gran was not a gifted cook, producing big all-in-one dishes, which provided the prevalent memory of a scummy pool of liquid sitting on top of the food bulk, paprika and onion pieces rotating in circles, hypnotising her into a lifelong fear of onion and paprika.

You’ll be pleased to hear I have no such scarring memory.

As you well know, I think baked beans are Satan’s spawn on earth, something I was mocked for ruthlessly at uni, baked beans being the staple part of 99.9% of the student body’s diet. Statistical fact.

They have a vile, watery, mushy texture and insipid taste and they look minging, slithering about the plate like conscious entities. What’s to like??

But this hatred was not sparked by being force fed them as a child. You have always been very respectful of the fact that I have point blank refused to eat them.

I do have one recent memory that fed the fire of loathing. An old boyfriend’s housemates bought an industrial size can of the foodstuff. One day, one housemate decided to open it, took a spoonful and left the small vat tucked away in a cupboard. It was forgotten about for weeks, until the then boyfriend unearthed it, its top layer blanketed in a green moss of mould.

I was one lucky lady to be witness to this discovery. We discussed the subsequent course of action as I hid beneath the kitchen table.

He rightly pointed out it wouldn’t be sensible to put the contents into the bin in case the bin leaked, and it was a non-starter to pour it down the sink. He settled upon depositing it down the toilet but, the vessel being so big, this took several stints.

Think about it... The consistency of baked beans and the sound it would make hitting water. It sounded like he wasn’t very well, particularly as the sound of heavy dollops and the accompanied trickling juices was interspersed by flushes of the toilet.

A golden memory.

Every fear and phobia must have a cause, whether it’s obviously inspired by real life events, like the onion pieces, or something slumbering in the unconscious and only awoken when provoked. Like Sara’s button phobia.

Whilst it seems perverse, I agree there is something forlorn and miserable about an orphaned button – once useful and now forgotten about, once adorning a cardigan and now sticky with cobweb and dust behind the back of a cupboard.

Perhaps Sara’s phobia is that she really fears a similar reality, being useless and unwanted, left waiting for someone to rediscover and reinvent her.

Or perhaps Sara simply needs to man up and collect neglected buttons in a Quality Street tin, therefore both facing her fear and turning it into a positive.

BUT that doesn’t mean I should start eating baked beans. I’d rather eat Allie’s Gran’s scummy stew.

***

What is YOUR phobia, Reader of this blog. Yes, YOU. (No doubt Brontë edited out a paragraph similar to this blog in ‘Jane Eyre,’ in which Jane admits her darkest fear is of monsters under the bed or in the attic). I would like to know YOUR fear, Reader, however simple of perverse it is. It can be weird, wonderful or magnificently woeful. And why do you think, Reader, this phobia haunts you? Is there method to your madness? Please comment below, in a therapeutic admission and exploration of your darkest thoughts...