I have a variety of peculiar fears. I am afraid of horses with the simple explanation that the size of their mouth should they decide to bite you would easily remove if not the whole thing a large portion of your arm. I am afraid of eye’s, but to be more specific I am afraid of eye touching. It is just plain gross and a scary like touching your own internal organs. It just shouldn’t happen.

I am also afraid of needles, which is not an unusual fear, but I just happen to be one on a very long list of people. To prove how common this fear is it probably has the least creative “phobia” name out there… needlephobia. No Latin for this fear, keep it simple for the simple folk I suppose.

The fear that I discovered today or perhaps re-discovered since I don’t live my whole life in fear, is the fear of sneezing while driving. Thats right I said sneezing while driving.

The sneeze itself is interesting. The physical and cultural aspects are nearly endless except that they end eventually.

A sneeze also known as sternutation. A massive explosion of air from the lungs via the nose and mouth, usually ( but not always caused by an irritation of the mucous membranes within the nose, has a lot of roots in history and in popular culture. Every culture has a particular onomatopoeia for the sneeze. Achoo (English), Atchoum (french), Atchim (Japanese) , and every culture has their own “blessing” or at least an acknowledgement that you did sneeze. My fear is not rooted in any of these things. I do not fear that demons are escaping my body, so you need not “bless me”.
My fear is of driving while sneezing. This fear may be rooted in my inability to do math, so I face my fear by presenting math to you the reader.

Let’s start with the assumption that you are going 60mph when you sneeze.

(60 mi/hr) * (5280 ft / 1 mi) * (1 hr / 3600 sec)
88 ft/sec

While I searched and searched the internet for some sort of guess as to how long a sneeze lasts, I could find nothing. I assume in addition that the actual time lapse of a sneeze would vary based on a variety of influences from the irritant to the size of your lungs and length of your nose. I am surprised that our great government hasn’t sponsored a study on the time elapsed during a sneeze but then again maybe they have and the results are still classified top secret. I’m just an average citizen with a fear of sneezing while driving.

So as I said, I could not find a concrete number for how long a sneeze lasts but I am going to place it around 2 seconds. Two seconds seems like a good average. If you are traveling at 60mph and you sneeze for a length of 2 seconds you would travel 176 feet with your eyes closed. 176 feet with your eyes closed surrounded by other folks going 60 miles per hour. This is a frightening scenario.
I don’t think that this is an irrational fear.

I can not keep my eyes open while sneezing and while you might laugh and scoff at my fear. I urge you to look at the math… and next time that you are on the highway traveling 60 or higher… think about it.

I think you will find that my nasal expulsion fear (which has no “phobia” listing by the way) is not that irrational but reasonably founded. The only thing that this fear might prove about me is that I think a little too much… o.k. WAY TOO MUCH.

May airbags always protect you during allergy season.