1. Crocodiles. Eek.

2. Junior high English teachers. This is just common sense.

3. Dolls. They have eyes, they don’t blink. Creepy.

4. Aliens. Star Trek has never satisfactorily explained what all this probing was about, and I don’t believe any of that pre-Prime-Directive ranny-gazzoo.

5. Snakes, spiders and rats. There is a reason that vampires don’t run with guinea pigs and koala bears.

6. Sharks. If you’ve ever watched Spring Break Shark Attack, either the original or the sequel, or the discovery channel, you just plain know: DON’T GO INTO THE WATER.

7. Getting floss stuck in my teeth. What if it never comes out?

8. Fish hooks. They may seem like inert metal barbs, but they are really sitting there, plotting against my eyeballs. I just know it.

9. People with velociraptor sternums. Where do those come from? Madonna, whom I admire as a business woman, is looking way too much like an East German weight lifter these days for comfort.

10. Everybody on my tenure committee, people who used to be friends and colleagues and mentors, and are now people behind closed doors and closed conversations.

11. My own monkey brain. The more I don’t think about tenure and how much it is bothering me, the more the anxiety comes out in odd, unpredictable ways.

I’m going to go back to coding.