Mycophobia: The Fear of Mushrooms

When I was a little girl, I was a pretty picky eater. My dad, being a disciplinarian type, used to try to force me to eat things I hated. One food that I've always really hated with a passion is mushrooms. But my hatred goes beyond merely not wanting to eat the little buggers. I don't even like the sight or smell of mushrooms and you'd be hard pressed to get me to touch one.

I think this weird aversion to mushrooms came about when I was a toddler and our family lived in England. Our backyard was full of wild mushrooms, which thrived in England's damp, cool climate. My parents told me that the mushrooms were poisonous and I should never touch or eat them. I was about three years old at the time and the mushrooms in our yard were HUGE. And I have three older sisters who were teenagers at the time; one of them was also quite an artist. To drive home that I shouldn't play with the toadstools in our yard, she used to draw shark teeth on the mushrooms in my coloring books. Those that didn't get the shark tooth cosmetic makeover got mean looking expressions drawn on their caps. One day, when my sister was feeling particularly mean-spirited, she enlisted another sister to pick some of the parasitic plants. They put them in a bag and had a great time chasing me around the yard, howling with laughter while I screamed and cried. It got so bad that I would actually freeze and start screaming if I so much as saw a mushroom close to me.

These days, my reaction to mushrooms are not like they used to be. For example, I no longer freak out if I see one in the yard and I don't run away screaming if one is on my plate at dinner time. But I can't eat them and I won't willingly touch them. And I also hate the way they smell. Even though I know the phobia is irrational and weird, I just can't get beyond it. At 35 years of age, I figure I'm pretty set in my ways and I doubt I'll ever change, even though lots of people have told me that I don't know what I'm missing.