Sunday, October 26, 2008

Chapter 14: Phobia

This morning, while drinking juice and enjoying the morning rays, I spotted an insect scratching across the floor.  It looked truly iniquitous, with horns and spikes and ebony coloring, like it was perhaps from the seventh layer of Hell.  I chased it, because I knew that Mote would find great pleasure in eating such a strange find.

Once within my grasp (I handled it with a sheet of my writing journal; I wasn't about to touch it,) I approached the Frog dwelling to put the Morsel in.  With fear and disgust on my face, I found the three Frogs anticipating its arrival, quite Undaunted.

I found the three Frogs quite Undaunted

Round and about they chased it, the Morsel devilish in its abilities to scratch away from the Frogs, until Peaseblossom, by a turn of luck, came within range to Snatch and gulp the Morsel.

Peaseblossom Snatched and gulped the Morsel

After the fray ended, Mustardseed looked up and questioned me.  He asked why I was so afraid of the Morsel, it being so miniscule while I was so gigantic, powerful, and lumbering in comparison.  I replied that it was a Ghastly Fiend, that it looked terrible, and that it would have scared many other Men, and that in fact I was perhaps low in my amount of Phobias in comparison to other Men on this Lily Pad.

Mustardseed then asked me to define Phobia.

Under his disapproving eye, I went to my dictionary.  The Frog asked why I consult That Book so much for the legitimization of my words, and why hadn't I become a little more Frog-like, forging my own path to communication Froggity.

Before reaching Phobia in the dictionary, I briefly looked for Froggity, which I could not find.

To my chagrin, the definition was not quite what I remembered, or at least hoped for.  I read aloud that a Phobia is the distress or embarrassment at having failed or being humiliated.  I then realized that I was looking at the definition of chagrin, and not Phobia.   I excused myself, and promptly read the definition for Phobia, reading that it is an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.

Mustardseed sat motionless for a minute.  I could see the ramifications sorting in his Mind.

The Frog said that he now saw what the word meant.  He thought neither definition did it justice, but perhaps the combination of the two could point to the true meaning of the word, for nothing Men do is without constant fretting about the acceptance of other Men, who may be halfway across the globe, or yet to come, or even long dead, and that surely this social arena is the only place where Phobias truly harm Men, because of each Man's Phobia of being perceived to have a Phobia, which is much stronger than the man's original Phobia.

I was about to tell him that those were in fact two separate definitions of two separate words, when he interrupted and asked me about my Phobias, which ones I had or perhaps which I had conquered since meeting the Frogs, except for of course my social Phobia, which I would Do Well To Discard.

I said that I had a small Phobia for strange and slithering insects, though I could pick them up with Not-Me objects, and also a fear of Heights, called Acrophobia, which has been identified, classified, and catalogued in Man's great Bank Of Fears, which is perhaps the most organized and well-kept Bank Of Knowledge in Existence. 

I looked to the other side of the Dwelling and glimpsed Peaseblossom, who was throwing all of my peculiarities at me, with bravery and spryness, by climbing high onto the Dwelling's walls, the Fiendish Morsel still wriggling in his Frog belly.

2 comments:

genghiskuhn said...

The Frog asked why I consult That Book so much for the legitimization of my words....

Hilarious

Bichitalk said...

When will you update? For once, I am looking for the frogs.