I’m not frightened of flying. Or spiders. Nor, like one friend of mine, do I have a crippling fear of tomatoes. But I do suffer from mild koumpounophobia — the fear of buttons.
I should add that, in my case, it is more a mild distaste than a full-blown phobia. While I wouldn’t care to be ravished by a pearly queen, I am really only bothered by loose buttons, not those attached to clothing — so I can wear shirts happily enough.
Recently, though, on the ‘takes one to know one’ principle, I have begun to wonder whether Apple’s Steve Jobs might suffer from a more extreme form of this condition. Photos of Jobs suggest he has a remarkable distaste for visible fastenings, seams or other attachments on his clothing. Moreover my search on Google Images for ‘Steve Jobs + pearly king’ created a conceptual tear in the cyberspace continuum, linking me for no reason at all to a Swansea City fan site.
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