Oh, infernal grass, how your greenness haunts me! You camouflage the most diseased of vermin—insects, rodents and children scamper freely in your expansive forests of grotesque greenery we call yards.
I run screaming when I see your millions of sharp skinny blades protruding from Mother Earth, like unsheathed swords waiting for me to fall upon them and disembowel myself. I make a wide berth around the piles of shredded lawn clippings—grass blades that have been freed from the shackles of their roots, hoping I might step on them with my wet galoshes and carry them like parasites into my home.
One day, you grass blades will learn to get up and walk on your own, but I will not be around to witness that horror: I will move to the desert. Take that, grass!
Of course, I also fear sand. Bastard sand, you are the Devil’s work! Zillions of infinitesimal hard granules, you turn a windy day into a maelstrom of tiny round projectiles. If one of those grains of sand gets into my eyes, I will most certainly go blind, and a grain in my ear will go straight to my brain, rendering me a vegetable.
A day at the beach is an opportunity for you, O dreaded sand, to infiltrate every part of my body: my toes, hair, belly button and anus. That’s why I always wear protective goggles, face mask, surgical scrubs and a sombrero whenever I am forced by law to go to the beach: (I am still fighting for those laws to be repealed.)
Children, so accustomed to the ways of evil, abet your menacing ways and erect altars to you in the form of sand castles, but I always demolish these monstrosities: I bring a hammer attached to a stick that’s long enough so I don’t have to come in contact with any sand, and I use this to raze these miniature fortresses. You’ll not best me, foul sand!
I, in fact, hate all of the outdoors. Once I’ve relocated to the desert, I’ll perch my shack upon a large solid rock, lock my doors and never set foot outside again. Take that, outdoors!
Once I’ve sheltered myself from the wild, I will be forced to confront my fear of paint. I curse thee, wretched paint! In wet form, your fatal stench clogs my nostrils, making me light of head and short of breath.
One drop of you forever mars anything it touches—a permanent scar left as a constant reminder of your power over the weak and infirm. Once you, O rancid liquid, have been slathered upon the walls and ceilings and sills of any room, your ghastly monochromeness mocks me. Everywhere I look, all I see is you. That is why the walls of my dream home will not bear the mark of the paint menace!
Finally, once my shelter is built, I will put it in a rocket and shoot it into space, for, you see, I fear gravity. A pox upon thee, O vile force of nature! Your pull upon me prevents my unfettered ascent into the heavens. Each time my feet touch the ground, I convulse and shriek, knowing my destiny is to remain here on Earth, so that is why I must leave. As I hurl into the cosmos toward Pluto, my feet will no longer be tethered to Terra Firma, my fears will finally be allayed, and I will cocoon myself in the security of my wayward spacecraft. I leave thee an orphan, foul gravity!
I’m also afraid of language, so typing this very story has caused sweat to stream from my every pore. Now I am curled in a fetal position, slowly typing this treatise one letter at a time, praying that this will never be decipherable! If it is read, I shall surely perish!
Die, O cursed tongue of the teeming masses!
AAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIGH!!!
