Enochlophobia is the fear of crowds, those who suffer with this fear will go out of their way to avoid places like malls, theaters, or any event that crowds would regularly attend.

I did not always have this.  I am pretty sure of it.  I remember playing in crowds of children in school and in the summer.  I remember going to pep rallys and not freaking out.

The first instance of it that I recall was at NC State when Reagan came to visit.  I went with my liberal cohorts to rabble rouse and heckle.  We didn't pass the hotshot and clearance approved list, being sophomore college students, and so we got cheap sheets in the nosebleed seats at the top of the wooden bleechers.  Reynolds was made of wood and brick and held a few thousand people.  It shook with their energy as they rustled about in their seats and stood to applaud.  At some point in the speech, I remember the crowd kind of fading from my vision and the speech blurring out and all I could hear was the blur of the sea of people and a rythmic echo in my ears of my own heart racing.  One thought, "How do we get out of here if something happens?"  We were too high up to be near the exits and below us was a fall to a hard floor of about two stories, so no jumping.  I was in a a near panic and so I said, "I've had enough!  I am going to go play some pool."  And I left.  My friends thought it was the politics.

Fade to Reynold's again.  This time, a basketball game.  My friend had camped out and decided to treat me to a real game, 2nd row center court and the Dream Team and Jim Valvano.  The NCSU Wolf was passed throught the crowd directly over my head,  I still remember the plush feel of his suit.  The cheerleaders were awesome.  They threw the girls up 20 feet in the air and then caught them in baskets and then threw them up into kewpie doll holds not three feet in front of me.  I was directly on the court and could see the sweat on the backs of the necks of the players on the benches in front of me.  It was incredible.  And then I turned around.  All I could see was row after towering row of people in back and above me.  I felt the same panic overcome me and I started to shake.  I asked him how we would exit and he said it is best to wait a bit after the game and then leave, as the people will rush the court after.  This was normal and part of the fun for him.  He could see that I was afraid.  Rushing the court would mean all those people behind me getting to in front of me somehow.  I had to leave.  He understood and stayed, like I asked him to.  I went next door to the annex and played pool and watched the very exciting game on the TV.  We met up afterward at his car.

Crabtree Valley Mall is terrifying and I do not go there.  The era of big box stores in small shopping villages is a welcome change from the giant people holding boxes of malls that was the trend for so long.  A big box store only holds just so many people at once and has lots of exits.  The parking lots are still kind of creepy.

I watched the Olympics this year and through all of the pagentry, I kept thinking about how awful it would be if something happened and all of those people had to get out of there.

I have been to music concerts, but only small arenas or grass-pass seating up in the open.  I missed the last few songs of  Santana concert because I needed to get to the car and get out of there before the other people started the great exeunt.

I have never, not once, had the desire to stand in front of a crowd and wait for doors to open.  I have seen pictures of Woodstock then and more recently and only imagine how horrific a sea of eager or distracted people would be.

And then this morning, I heard of a man in New Jersey being trampled and killed by shoppers entering Wal-mart at 5 AM.  I went back to bed and decided to not even try to shop today.  What horrified me the most was not that it happened, I fear things like this and was only surprised that it had not happened yet.  It was not that a woman had her stomach crushed and her baby killed a few feet over from the man that was killed.  It was not that the doors were pulled off the hinges.  It was not that the people kept shopping after the incident and that they walked in past the paramedics and kept moving on.  It was not that the shoppers who did this probably did not know they did it and continued on and checked out.   It was not that Wal-mart did not have the human decency to close the store until the people could be removed or to at least have people use the other entrances.   It is not that those blood stained gifts will be given for Christmas to unsuspecting people and children.

It was that women did it.  Men don't stand around at 5 AM to shop.  I have seen the pictures of this phenomena on tv for a decade now.  And it is always women.  Little old ladies in track suits.  Some fools there with their kids.  Young women who have been in training and have maps of the store layout and lists.  Women.

I am never amazed at the evil men do.  Wars from the inception of civilization, civilization designed to stop some of the killing among men.  Young men at concerts and games and Woodstock and Arrowmont and on killing fields of wars have inured me to the crushing violence of men in crowds or even small gangs. 

But I never think of women as being in those situations, never them being the feet behind the trampling.  But women killed that man and that baby.

But that will never happen to me.  And I will never suffer that guilt.  Because I have enochlophobia, and it will keep me safe.