By Chris Cosci

When I was a kid, somebody told me a ridiculous story. They said if you stand in a dark room with a mirror and say "Bloody Mary" three times, some horrible woman named Bloody Mary would appear and try to hurt you. I don't remember what you had to do after that, but it probably involved a lot of screaming.

Of course, I'm older and wiser now. I realize that this is just another absurd urban legend. No woman is going to mysteriously appear out of thin air and try to hurt me. You would have to be crazy to believe that.

Yet for some reason, I am paralyzed with fear about this. Here I am, a grown man, and I cannot look into a mirror and say that name. I've tried. I wind up staring into the mirror, saying to myself, "just say the stupid name - nothing is going to happen." But nothing comes out. I either turn on the light or just walk away - quickly.

I understand that most people have fears. These can usually be classified as either rational or irrational. For example, a rational fear would be the fear of getting fired from your job. An irrational fear would be the fear that the company will replace you with a goat.

But my fear goes beyond irrational. Somehow, I have been able to shake off most fears. I am no longer afraid of the dark, like when I was younger. I have watched Jaws, and I am still not afraid of swimming at the beach. And I can still take showers after watching Psycho. But this is just plain outrageous.

I would try to find a support group, but I have a feeling this is not a common problem. Otherwise, I'm sure there would be a word for it. After all, we live in a society where we have the word lutraphobia. However, I find it hard to believe that my affliction is less common than people who have a fear of otters.

I can understand some phobias, like acrophobia (fear of heights), arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces). These are common enough. But there are some phobia names that just feel like they were made up for the sheer trivial aspect. I mean, is our society really plagued with people who have the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of their mouth? (That would be arachibutyrophobia.)

If we can have a word for that, why can't we have a word to describe my fear? Something like stupidfakophobia. After all, it is said that we add hundreds, maybe thousands of new words to our language each year. And why not? It's apparent that our language is not nearly as confusing as it could be.

I think we should have a phobia for everything. Let's have sprintophobia - the fear of bad cell phone commercials. How about nomoveaphobia - the fear of being stuck with the letter Q in scrabble when all of the Us are gone? Or maybe stupipseudophobia - the fear of having to read an inane list of fake phobias.

Truthfully, I don't need a word to describe my fear. I need a cure. I'll just stand in front of that mirror, look right into it and say "Bloody Mary" three times. Then I'll be able to get on with my life. I can do it... maybe next time.