"C J Campbell" wrote in message

I thought the same. Granted, I thought blaming it all on Hughes' mother
was
a little trite

Maybe. Like I said in a previous post, I was raised by a fellow who became
violently ill around dogs based on a brief experience he had in a Nazi
concentration camp (he was an American POW...how he ended up at KZ
Mauthausen is not particularly relevant.)

In any case, I grew up thinking that the act of a dog licking somebody's
face was abhorrent and nausea and disgust at the very sight of such a thing
normal. To this day, the smell of a dog still disgusts me, and I didn't
think it abnormal at all until my wife told me so.

For one thing, how did a guy who supposedly had such a fear of germs ever
have sex?

OCD is irrational. That was the answer I was given when I asked how a guy
afraid of something a trivial as a germ straps himself into an experimental
airplane people say won't fly, and then breaks records with it. A guy like
that shouldn't be afraid of anything.

-c