Entypophobia
by Michael Fryd
I am
unburdened by common run of the mill fears of
heights, clowns, open or closed spaces (your
choice), snakes, or things that go bump in the
night, but faced with the intrusive tyranny of a
form full of aggressively probing questions that
MUST be answered in nonnegotiable arbitrary
spaces I curl up in a fetal position; right thumb
buried in mouth while the left hand seeks refuge
deep between the thighs, cupped protectively
around my genitalia.
I was relieved
to hear from my therapist I wasn’t the only
one afflicted with Entypophobia; the fear of
forms. It wasn’t in the top forty on the
neurosis hit parade, but its obscurity, he opined,
was likely caused by its sufferers’
inability to face, never mind follow the rigid
instructions for setting up our trauma’s
Facebook page.
He thought my
phobia was likely triggered the first time I
tried to fit my full name, Maui Wowee
Buenafortuna Shokolowsky in the mingy space
allocated on a form; my parents, Seymour
Shokolowsky and Mary Angela Buenafortuna,
incurable romantics, named me after the contents
of a joint they shared the night I was conceived.
Learning I
wasn’t alone gave me courage. Like Rosa
Parks, I knew the time had come to take a stand,
or in her case a seat. It was time for the masses
of long-suffering entypophobiacs to rise up
against the cruel oppression of tyrannical
bureaucracy; we had nothing to lose but the paper
shackles that enslaved us.
I was amazed
at the enthusiastic response I received to my ad
on Craig’s list. Our first meeting was a
huge success. We exchanged horror stories “Have
you ever had to fill out a Chinese visa
application?” Or, “How about those
bastards at eHarmony?” Some of the attendees,
like the little people on the set of the Wizard
of Oz, excited to meet fellow sufferers for the
first time, disappeared into dark corners where
they engaged in enthusiastic free form groping.
The room was filled with emotion. We sang, “We
shall overcome” and dreamt that someday we
would be judged by the content of our character
and not our ability to fill out a form. We
yearned for the right to transmit our personal
data in less oppressive ways. Someone suggested
our motto should be “ Give us essay or give
us death”. While this sounded a little
hardcore for most us, it was taken up as a war
cry by a spontaneously formed splinter group,
RESIST (Radical Entypophobiacs Spurning the
Injustice of Social Tyranny). They stormed out of
the meeting chanting “ Forms are Whack give
them the Sack”.
Those of us,
who remained, the radical middle, agreed that
while we weren’t ready to die for it, essay
was an ideal solution. Instead of the
impersonality and constrictions of one size fits
all forms, each of us could write a page or two
that best described his or her essence without
spatial restrictions.
We were eager
to storm the castle walls of the entypophile
establishment, plant our flag, a blank page, and
let documentary freedom ring, but none of us had
any experience with organized revolutionary
action so we settled for another meeting to plot
against our oppressors but mainly to bask in the
company of kindred spirits
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