Traumatized by Ham Okay, since most of you are loyal readers, there's something you need to know about me. I have an illogical fear that has followed me even into my adult years. I have an illogical fear of—ham. Yes, ham.  You may be laughing at this (and I highly advise that you do since it's pretty funny), but please let me explain. When I was in early elementary school, our family had a cat that would only eat ham. Gross, gross ham. We tried for years to get this cat to eat cat food with nutritional value, but it was unless. This began my fear of the gross, squishy, pink goop that Connie III ate (and yes, we had lots of Connies). I started noticing my fear of ham when I refused to open up the container where the food was kept which was in a tub of butter.  I think I once opened this container while looking for butter and nearly gagged when I realized what was really in it. Ever since then, I stayed away from tubs of butter. I even started refusing to wash the dishes if the empty ham container was in the sink. If I absolutely had to do the dishes, I washed everything but the ham container. This is when I realized I had a problem. Soon, other people started to learn about my fear of this pork product—including my babysitter Sarah T. Sarah T. got a huge kick out of the fact that I was scared of ham. She used it as blackmail. All she had to do was walk over to the fridge and start to pull out the ham container to make me cave in and obey her. And I didn't mind. I just wanted that stuff away from me. She would even chase me around the house with that stuff.  My fear even carried over into the classroom when I was in 4th grade. My teacher read to us a book called The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.  I was really enjoying the book, until the scene of the actual pageant. It's been so long since I've heard the story, but I remember a little boy in the story dressed as a Wise Man, and for some reason he was carrying ham across the stage, and the book said he dropped one. And then the book said the ham stayed there in the middle of the floor through the entire pageant. The ENTIRE pageant. I don't think I listened to the rest of the book because I was too busy thinking about that stupid piece of ham lying in the middle of the floor! I kept thinking, "Dear goodness! Someone pick up that ham!!" Wow. Yeah, so there's my story. Don't worry, I've gotten better over the years. I can actually eat certain kinds of ham now. I still refuse to eat deli ham, though. It's too pale and reminds me of the ham Connie III would eat. And I still shudder when I hear the word "ham". It just doesn't sound good! So, yeah...you may laugh at me for all of this. Does anyone else have an illogical fear? | 
