The Scream, by Edvard Munch

Odontolinonophobia- Fear of dental floss (This term is newly minted. You won’t find it in any dictionary or psychiatric textbook.)
No, not the title of a book à la Erica Jong. Let’s face it. Floss scares some people, but not as much as it does RJ Moody, who fears that he’ll decapitate himself while applying its fearsome threads to his mouth. He even wrote a poem about it.

http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1920289-Fear-of-Flossing

You could probably sing it, to the tune of the famous western song Riders In The Sky.

Fear of Flossing

My head bounced off the vanity,
and rolled across the floor.
I saw the ceiling, wall, and tile,
and then the wall once more.
This view just kept repeating,
and my nose was getting sore.
The redundancy was killing me,
’til alas, I saw the door.

Out on the kitchen floor I rolled,
between the dining chairs,
and then beneath the table.
It was dusty under there.
I hadn’t noticed that before,
but I guess I shouldn’t care,
because I had bigger problems;
for example, cellar stairs.

Going down the hall was fretful.
All my sins I did confess,
’cause the cellar door was open,
as by now you probably guessed;
plus I always get religious.
when I’m facing such duress.
Then just inches from the stairs,
my lucky noggin came to rest.

Now while my glee was genuine,
it was also quickly spent,
as I recalled the minute prior,
when I was a taller gent.
Before I grabbed that length of
waxy string with minty scent.
Before I had my horrible, freakish,
dental floss accident.

© Copyright 2013 RJ Moody (UN: rjmoody at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
RJ Moody has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.

Following up on our first Use for Dental Floss (escaping from jail), another fear of flossing involves the uncanny ability of some prisoners to adapt pretty much anything, including floss, as a weapon.

Palm Beach (Florida) County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, despite several lawsuits by prisoners who were trying to change his mind, refused to allow them access to floss, claiming they could turn it into a weapon or a rope. See the article in the http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2012/10/18/Sheriff-No-floss-for-inmates/UPI-95591350581330/.

In his blog, The Graveyard Shift, Lee Lofland describes several ways in which prisoners can use floss, toothpaste, and plastic floss containers to create rope, strangle each other, pass notes from cell to cell, and saw through jail bars (very slowly).

http://www.leelofland.com/wordpress/dental-floss-murder-weapon-and-tool-for-prison-escape/

It’s enough to make you scream from fear.