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Thursday, April 24, 2008

Blame it on the snow (and therefore Christmas music playing in our house), but Zach started singing “Santa Clause is coming to town” this morning. His version goes like this: “Santa…to town. Santa…to town. Santa…to town.” I said, “Zachary, are you saying ‘Santa Clause is coming to town?’” (I sang it to him). He enthusiastically responded, “Yeah, yeah! Santa come to town. Santa come to town.”

As if totally offended by the inappropriateness of it all, Matthew chastised Zachary, “No! Zachy, it’s not Christmas. Santa Clause is NOT coming to town.” Well, bah hum-bug. Matthew sure didn’t complain when it snowed last week, we listened to Christmas music and drank hot cocoa!

Mike chimed in, “Well, no. Santa’s not coming to town for a while, but Zach’s birthday IS coming to town.” Zach jumped on that right away, “Birthday…to town. Birthday come to town. Presents come to town. Presents to town.”

Matthew has already announced that Zach should get Legos for his birthday and that he will, of course, share them with his older brother. (As if Matthew shares his with ZJ. Yeah right). The one gift I KNOW Matthew would not insist on playing with/using is stickers. Zachary currently LOVES stickers. Meanwhile, Matthew has developed a serious aversion to them. It’s almost a phobia, really. If the checker at the grocery store asks the boys if they want stickers, Matthew practically shouts, “No! I don’t like stickers.” I remind him to be polite so then he says, “No, thank you. I don’t like stickers.”

The other day there was a sticker on the floor of our car – it was an ancient sticker that I’m sure had lost all sticky-power. I asked Matthew to pick something up off of the floor that happened to be in the same vicinity as said-sticker. He recoiled in disgust. “No! I can’t. It’s too close to the sticker. I might touch it!”

I did some Google-research on the topic and discovered that some refer to this as “stickerophobia,” though there was reference to something called “panniophobia” which also means ‘fear of stickers.’ I think there’s a good chance that some one made up this term in response to the question, “is there a name for a phobia of stickers?” And then people saw this panniophobia and since it sounded fancier and more ‘scientific’ than stickerophobia, they ran with it. Anyway, whatever it may be called, I did find that Matthew is not alone in this fear, though it appears there are no established support groups for this that suffer from this debilitating ailment.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Jenny, I was reading your blog as I ws searching for a term for someone who is scared of stickers.

I actually thought my sister is MAD. She refuses to have any stickers on or NEAR her. She used to like stickers when she was younger however, I am not sure what caused her phobia of stickers but this is very scary and today, my youngest sister went up to her with ONE sticker and asked her to stick it on and my sister used a chair to block away my little sister (by this time, my sister looked as if she wanted to cry) and her harmless sticker...I ended up in FITS of laughter as I've never seen something so ridiculous before. Is there a scientific explanation of this phobia? Oh, and then she hit me for laughing at her fear of stickers. Hit me very very hard.

Unknown said...

hi Jenny,
I have this fear of stickers. its awful. not only do i fear stickers but anything sticky. like if a bottle is sticky or sticky hands. sticky tape is the worst its awful. my family think its absolutely hilarious and yes i've ended up in tears from it. my friends give me rolls of sticky tape for christmas and birthdays. i havent always had this fear it has only developed over the past 6 maybe 7 years and i'm now 25. i go totally mental if it touches my nails. even thinking about it now is really upsetting me so i'm gonna stop talking about it!

Anonymous said...

I too have a phobia of stickers. Along with fake tatoos, bandades with pictures on them, and lipstick. It is always way too hard to explain though to people. I would hope someone comes up with another name for this phobia.

Grace said...

Hi Jenny,
I also have this fear. I'm 15 now but when I was younger like Matthew I used to scream and freak out whenever someone tried to give me a sticker, like him. I was reminded of that this morning when I went to the dentist and he offered me stickers, which I politely accepted then gave to my brother after having a slight panic attack.
I'm constantly mocked by my parents, siblings, and friends for this, and I do hope this phobia becomes more well known in the future so more people would take it seriously.