WEBVTT

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All right.

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My parents are retired now.

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They were in the
medical professions.

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My mom was a psychiatrist.

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Actually, I'm very proud of her.

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She was one of the country's
foremost psychiatrists

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back in the '80s.

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And back in the '80s--

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I keep saying that--

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we didn't have the internet.

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And what we had
was big mail days.

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So we would have
mail of just books,

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medicine-- medical books,
that kind of thing.

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We never actually had
literature in the home

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unless my younger sister and
I got it from the library.

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So it's actually stunning that
I became an English professor.

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But what we did have is all--

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so many books on science,
and nature, and my mom's

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medical books.

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And one of the books
that we got was

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something-- it was like a phone
book, it came once a year.

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And it was the compendium of all
that year's diagnosed phobias,

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which is the phobia list.

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And so that, to
my sister and I--

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we were 10, nine
years old-- that

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was like Christmas rummaging
through the Sears catalog.

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There would be things
like fear of bald people,

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fear of the pope,
fear of peanut butter

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sticking to the roof of your
mouth, that kind of thing.

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Then years later I
realized like, wow, I

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was a jerk as a kid because
these are all actual people.

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These are actual people who
sought help for their fears.

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No matter how much a
10-year-old found that funny,

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in hindsight now I
realize, again, these

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are very real people here.

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So they stopped
making the hard copy.

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It's available now online.

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Those of you who
are students, don't

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look at this tonight,
which means you're

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going to look at it tonight.

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You will be lost for two hours
of like alphabetical compendium

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of all the world's phobias.

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And you'll just
look up and it'll

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be midnight all of a sudden.

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Anyway, so that's an exercise
that I do for those of you who

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are writing students
and here's--

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I have you-- I have my
students go to the phobia list.

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And instead of making
fun of it-- ha, ha, ha--

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there's some X-rated
ones in there--

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is I actually asked
them to choose a phobia

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and to write from the
point of view of someone

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who has that phobia
and to show empathy.

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You could be funny
but also to show

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that this is in fact a
three-dimensional person who

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just happens to, I don't
know, have a fear of worms,

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or axolotls, or
something like that.

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So this is a poem
from the phobia list--

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a little bit of a different
spin about it-- about the phobia

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not from the point of view of
someone who has the phobia.

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This is called "Hippopotomonstr
osesquippedaliophobia,"

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or the fear of long words.

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"On the first day of
classes, I secretly

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begged my students-- please,
do not be afraid of me.

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I know my last name
on your semester

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schedule is chopped off or
probably misspelled or both.

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I can't help it.

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I know the panic of
too many consonants

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rubbed up against each
other, no room for vowels

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to fan some air into the room
of a box marked instructor.

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You want something to
really startle you?

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Try tapping the ball of roots
of a potted tomato plant in--

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into your cupped hand
one spring only to find

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a small, black toad, who
kicks and blinks his cold eye

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at you, the sun, or a gnat.

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Be afraid of the X-rays
for your teeth or lung.

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Pray for no dark spots.

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You might have-- and I
always have to pause on this.

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This is the longest
word in the OED.

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You may have pneumonoultramic
roscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,

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or cold lung.

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Be afraid of money spiders
tiptoeing across your face

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while you sleep on a
sweet, big, fat couch.

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But don't be afraid of me, my
last name, or what language

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I speak, or what accent
dulls itself on my molars.

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I promise I will tell jokes.

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I will help you see the gleam of
the beak of mohawked cockatiel.

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I will lecture on
luminescent sweeps

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of ocean full of tiny
dinoflagellates oozing

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green light when disturbed.

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I promise dark gatherings
of toad fish and comical

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shrimp just when you think you
are all alone in this class

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hoping to stay somehow afloat."

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