Beware ye faint of heart

Yes, it is that time again. When the anxiety-ridden among us prepare to spend a difficult night fraught with troubling memories.

I speak, of course, about Friday the 13th (as Coyote alluded in his intuitive post of earlier today).

Fear of this day is known as paraskavedekatriaphobia. And we better get used to this poysyllabic syndrome because there are three -- count 'em -- three Friday the 13ths this year. The next one is just a month away, in March, and we're haunted by the spectre of yet another in November.

Apparently fear of this fateful date affects millions of people. The U.S. Navy will not launch a ship on a Friday the 13th. And there are suggestions that accidents actually increase.

A survey by Richard Wiseman, noted in National Geographic, led the British psychologist to conclude that people who have negative feelings about Friday the 13th are likely to be more freaked out and therefore more likely to have mishaps.

In other words, we have nothing to fear but fear of each and every waking minute until midnight tonight.