the ragbag: today in intriguing german loanwords →
torschlusspanik • fear of being left out
literally: “door-shutting panic.”
this was my state of emotion back when my father’s company was giving away free zeppelin rides at a corporate picnic and i went to climb aboard the dirigible (with the secret intention of zeppelin-jacking it and piloting it to my himalayan library castle) when the captain (the hungarian uncle of my childhood arch-nemesis) measured me (humiliatingly) with a yardstick and announced to the crowd (which was brimming with débutantes competing for the brief focus of my deficient attention span) that i was not “of adequate stature to board the zeppelin” and that with my “puerile” (yet exquisitely-sculpted) “chicken legs,” i was better suited for the sandbox and sifting around for “buried rabbit turds.”
you wonder why 8 of the 9 members of my entourage are licensed personal trainers, why i taught myself how to do sleep crunches, why i eat a 5-egg creatine omelet every morning, the answer is torschlusspanik.
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