Omphalophobia: terrified by a lint holder

I'm pleased to announce that Boston has finally ceased doing her impression of Seattle - you may all stop taking your winter dosage of vitamin D. Hooray for seasonal affective disorder!

So. While I'm doing my best to resurrect the blog, there's not too much to be said this week. I've had a couple of inquiring minds ask about the roots of this deeply-seated and long held belly button phobia. A little research yields that I may not be the only one - fear of the belly button is technically called omphalophobia. I'm thinking that it might be time to face the fear, tell the story, and just redirect future investigators to the blog so that I don't have to experience the sweating and nausea that comes along with telling the story. Going to grab a basin, and we'll get to it....

Circa 1987, your blogger was five years old, pleasantly chubby, generally cheerful, and most definitely an only child. To counteract any negative only child symptoms, my mom decided it would be helpful to me to spend as much time as possible with my cousins, particularly Maura, who was three years (and a day) younger. Maura and I wracked up the hours reading and playing house (okay, I sat in the corner and read while she flipped plastic pancakes on the barbie skillet), hopping around the yard, and taking turns bursting into tears over bugs, hair pulling, and mulch to the face. (We only mulch at each other now on holidays - a lot has changed. I also almost unintentionally poisoned her boyfriend with a lie about the nut-bearing status of my banana nut muffins last Easter - sorry, Brian!) Maura and I also spent a lot of time with her friend Megan. One day, while driving home, Mom informed me that Megan wouldn't be joining us to play for the rest of the week.

"Why?" I asked stretching my toes to rest on the dashboard Volvo stamp and sipping a McDonald's diet coke.

"Well," explained Anne, nurse extraordinaire, "Megan needs to have surgery on her belly button."

Anything having to do with bugs, blood, or mud immediately intrigued me. "Why?" I asked again.

"Erm. Well..." my mom paused to chew on her own Diet Coke straw, trying to figure out how to simply the explanation of a hernia for a kindergarden audience.

"Don't drink and drive!!!" I shrieked, alarmed.

"Right, sorry...what? Oh, right. Well, Megan has a little bit of her intestine crawling out of her belly button, and so the doctors are going to poke it back in."

I immediately lost my taste for Diet Coke and most carbonated drinks as it dawned on me that the belly button is merely a thinly gathered pathway to the intestinal underworld. The potential for things to go wrong - to burst, to allow for sneaky gut snaking, to spring this fabled hernia - is terrifyingly high.

About six months later, while bopping around in one of my very first horseback riding lessons, the pony stopped short and ducked down for an impromptu dandelion salad. I formed a ball and rolled over her head, but not without snagging my belt on the horn of the western saddle. Realizing how close I'd come to the deadliest of situations, I lay mock-paralyzed in the grass until the pony started in on one of my braids for extra roughage. In the car on the way home, I cried. These intestines must stay intact.

To this day, I get nauseous, shaky, sweaty and white faced when I discuss belly buttons (or omphalophobia) in any sort of depth, which happens periodically as people find this to be stupid and amusing (understandable. It's completely irrational, I get it). Low rise jeans have been a life saver - no more inadvertent navel pokes by a metal button.

Excuse me. I need to lie down.