I have an irrational fear of mascara. Ever since childhood, I've had a very difficult time making eye contact with women who are wearing it. This may sound totally mental, but just LOOKING at someone's clumpy, too-long, pointy lashes gives me the knee-jerk instinct to look away, the way you do if something like a bug flies right at your eyes. Except it's someone's eyelashes. It's like my body is convinced the lady's lashes are going to detach and go flying at me like poison darts! Actually, that's a pretty hilarious visual.

Anyway, as I've gotten older I've learned to make the bare minimum eye contact required to be socially acceptable. Oddly, it only bothers me in person. I've never had a problem looking at someone in tv or in a picture with mascara. Which brings me to a few nights ago. My husband had been learning to soldier for a project at work. He's really brilliant and industrious, teaching himself from scratch and staying at the office until after 8pm all week just to help his boss. I'm so impressed and proud of him, so I've been doing my best to be supportive. Then one night he comes home with this chunk of circuitry he'd managed to remove, and proceeds to explain what he'd been doing and how he had to desoldier each pin, waving this thing in my face. It was this tiny bit of metal with all these tiny pins covering it. Those pins freaked me out more than I can describe. I couldn't breathe. It was like mascara, but my husband kept talking about them and pointing them out! He might as well have been waiving a gun in my face for the way my body was reacting! I tried to hold it together, but then a stray hair from my bangs actually fell into my right eye and I LOST it. I ran like I was on fire, locked myself in the bathroom, and washed out my eyes thoroughly before spending ten minutes hyperventilating on the floor.

Does anyone else ever feel like weird things are going to gouge out your eyes? I can't think of anything else that I find so visually upsetting. Normally my quirks have to do with things touching me.