When a Febreze Commercial Sets Your Mental Health Back by Years. And Years.

Watch that little love first.  I'll wait.  I mean, it only takes 30 seconds.  Trust me, you need to watch it... the rest of this will make much less sense if you don't.

Done?

Most people who know me (which I think most of you do) know that I have a ridiculous, embarrassing, irrational fear of fish.  And like all fears, the longer I live with it the worse it seems to get.  My parents think it stemmed from the Sunnies at a local lake nibbling on my leg hairs and toes as a child.  And I haven't always been afraid-- we used to have a fish tank that I was fascinated by and my dad and I would go to the fish store and bring home new fish and I would watch them swim around in their little plastic bag worlds in the car on the way home.

This is no longer true.  The way I like my fish?  Breaded, minced, or rolled in a little nest of rice and a sea weed leaf.  No eyeballs, no tails, no fins, no scales.  No swimming, no using gills to extract the oxygen particles from the water.  Dead.  Edible.  Delicious.  But most importantly, dead.  And not lookin' like a fish.

So then, Febreze came out with the commercial you just viewed.  And despite the fact that I can't eat in places with aquariums, am terrified about being in those stupid tube-viewing things in aquariums, don't particularly love swimming in lakes or rivers, and secretly judge people with fish tanks, there is nothing more frightening than the idea of a fish swimming willy-nilly through my home.  When I was younger, I used to have recurring dreams about fish escaping from the tank and chasing me through the house-- without needing water to swim and live.  So basically, the Febreze commercial is a slightly less vicious version of one of my very worst nightmares.

Aaaaaand... BONUS!  They bought a ton of air time to air this, and 2 more fish commercials, so my television viewing is constantly interrupted by paralyzing panic, hastened heartbeat, and total body heebie jeebies.

Never. Buying. Febreze.  Ever.