Real Trivia this Tuesday?

Some previous Tuesday Trivia posts have been anything but trivial. I tried to correct that somewhat, last Tuesday, with only partial success. This week I'm going to be trivial, even if it kills me dammit! You may ask, "why?". What does it really matter? Well, it doesn't, not really. The difference is that this week I simply don't have a whole lot on my mind, for this post. Right now, Lin and I have a lot of heavy stuff going on, and that's taking up a lot of room in my brain. None of that stuff would be interesting to anyone else, so it's not fair game anyway. So here I am typing away, waiting for some trivial thought to pop into my head. Heaven knows I have more than my share of trivial thoughts, after all.

Alright then, here's a question: where do weird fears come from, and who the heck thinks up the goofy names they give to those odd phobias? I can certainly understand the big fears, like claustrophobia or arachnaphobia. Those aren't really even phobias, since most of us are deathly afraid of claustro's and arachni's. Even that whole, "I'm afraid to leave my house" thing makes sense, though I can't recall its proper scientific name at the moment. But what about all those other, trivia-question-answer types of phobias? You've seen the lists, probably courtesy of some spamming friend of yours via email. I won't quote any of them here, because I deleted that email, but you know what I mean.

Is anyone actually afraid of, for instance, red rubber balls? What if you were afraid of double yellow lines? Here's one I'm sure has a really cool name: the fear of one's reflection in window-glass (versus mirrors, which lots and lots of people are naturally afraid of). How about the fear of phones ringing? That would be a real problem these days. But I'll bet there are people who run from the room screaming when someone's cell phone does its ringtone thing. How does one develop such bizarre fears, though? I've never heard an explanation. Are all those other phobias actually small windows of insanity? Is there a name for the fear of developing an unconventional fear, which might signal impending insanity? Just wondering, 'cause I have that one. Don't tell anyone, please. It's embarrassing. And trivial. Isn't it?