Fear and Barnacles

When I was four years old, I posed for a photo shoot for Children, a now defunct magazine. My long hair was pulled back neatly into two pigtails, my floral-patterned dress ironed and my Mary Janes shone. With my eyebrows furrowed, eyes narrowed and lips pouting, I portrayed the typically difficult child all too well.

I didn’t need to do too much acting. My mother tells me I was a challenge to raise. Although I have matured considerably since I was a young child, I have retained at least one of my former traits-my picky nature.

I have legitimate reasons for most of the things I dislike: Meat-don’t like the taste; severely pointed heals-unnecessarily witch-like; shoes and belts that don’t match-clear lack of forethought. But my deepest loathing is that little wretch-the barnacle. Barnacles make me cringe, shudder and all of those other verbs that denote discomfort and disgust.

This is the most inexplicable of my dislikes. Then again, what irrational pet peeve can really be explained? When people ask me to provide the reasons for my stance on this calcareous terror, I usually mumble something about their inherent grossness. I associate them with unwholesome things like leeches and ticks that stick to places that I deem would be better off without them.

I first realized that I hated barnacles when I visited a small Alaskan island in the summer of 1995. Bald eagles swooped among tall evergreens, salmon were spawning, humpback whales were migrating and the white, crusty barnacles were busy infesting the rounded rocks on the shoreline. This beach, which would have otherwise been barefoot-friendly, was littered with the pointy beaks of thousands of barnacles.

Since then I have tried to avoid all contact with barnacles. I have also educated myself about them, just in case. I now know that there are two types of barnacles: acorn and goose (there is also a barnacle goose, but that’s another story). The males have what is probably the largest penis, proportionally, of any animal. Scary, indeed.

Unfortunately, my “Ecology of the Oceans” class last year forced me to deal with these things firsthand, and the experience was about as painful as I expected it would be. The professor devoted an entire class to giving a barnacle-themed slideshow and then passing around dead barnacle samples that had been glued to pieces of wood.

I survived this torture, but just barely. Although I still hate barnacles as much as ever, I felt a small amount of pride for not freaking out during that dreadful class. I think my mom would tell you that a younger version of me would not have handled it so well.

Kim Rinehimer is a junior in the College and an associate editor of the Georgetown Voice. The barnacle goose will bite your nose off if you try to pet it.