Anatidaephobia is the fear that wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, a duck is watching you. While some people might see this debilitating condition as funny, we do not. We realise that it must be bloody awful, here are seven reasons why.
1. It’s Not Taken Seriously. People are often crass, insensitive and immature. While they would shy away from mocking the sufferers of other phobias they think nothing of making fun of anatidaephobes, solely for their own puerile entertainment and amusement. Well at 7 Reasons, we’re bigger and cleverer than that. We know what not to show an anatidaephobe.
- This is what not to show an anatidaephobe.
2. At Home. Anatidaephobes must find it terribly difficult to cope at home. After all, they’ll believe that when they’re there a duck is watching them. And how is anyone supposed to relax with a duck watching them? And how are they supposed to tell if a duck is watching them or not when they’re suffering from snow-blindness? Or soft-furnishing-induced vomiting.
3. Escape. So they’ve got a duck staring at them at home. What to do? What to do? Get away from it all, that’s what. Get away from the daily grind, the endless plates and pitchers, the white stuff all over the place, the searing pain in their eyes, the duck that may or may not be there staring at them and head off on holiday. To somewhere far, far away from the many, many cups and saucers and the sinister duck.
4. Having A Lovely Time, Wish You Were…Oh…You Are. Well, apparently to anatidaephobes, flying isn’t a barrel of laughs either. But a journey in an aircraft is a temporary annoyance – unless it plummets from the sky in a fiery ball and hurtles at several hundred miles an hour into a mountain, in which case it’s a more permanent irritation – and, having escaped the duck at the aeroplane window, the travelling anatidaephobe can finally emerge from the aircraft all set to begin their relaxing holiday in Osaka.
5. Look On The Bright Side. Well okay, Osaka may not be as relaxing at they’d hoped. But sufferers of anatidaephobia can console themselves with the thought that the big yellow duck isn’t real, and it’s not like ducks hang around in large gangs. That would be terrifying.
- Yes. This would be terrifying.
6. It’s Still Not Being Taken Seriously. Well it seems we’ve been rumbled. There does appear to be a series of images in this post that would be terrifying to anyone with a fear of ducks and, if you’re an anatidaephobe that’s made it this far down the page, we apologise for our silliness and can reassure you that there are absolutely no more photos of ducks in this post. It’s all just text from now on.
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7. Comparison. Okay, that was a cheap shot (which is great as there’s a global recession) and, you might reasonably ask, would we make fun of people who suffer from other debilitating ailments; people that are scared of the dark, for example, or the morbidly obese? And the answer is no, we probably wouldn’t. A series of pictures of the dark would be very dull indeed, and a post full of pictures of fat would be totally disgusting and would put everyone off their sandwiches. The good news, however, is that unlike the fear of the dark – or fat people – anatidaephobia isn’t real. It was made up by Gary Larson – he of The Far Side fame – so we can all relax now. Unless you’ve ever claimed to be an anatidaephobe or have been reading this piece through the gaps between your fingers, in which case you’re a simpering nitwit and we can heartily recommend this fine web page.
