Heebie-jeebies is both the informal and the default technical term for a dysphoric response to an innocent-seeming stimulus. Styrofoam, celery, wicker: Something in these materials represents a sensorial crisis for certain human bodies. The primordial heebie-jeebies—revulsion perceived variously in the spine, the molars, the bristling of hairs on the back of the neck—are conjured best with images that beam the feeling straight to the flesh. "Fingernails on chalkboard" is the cliche (feel it now?), but there are other choices: "Fleece makes my skin crawl," someone reported on a message board. "It makes my skin feel dirty and ticklish." For me the words "hot, dry towels" reliably cause the very root of my tongue to... thicken and shudder. ■ Softness, though equally subjective, at least gets that lovely old word, soft, from the Old English for calm and agreeable. If heebie-jeebies are screeches and creaks, soft things are a major chord, resonant with well-being, reassurance, forgiveness, and even—what the hay—love. But we humans aren't easily lulled into the confidence that we're cared for. The human senses never cease detecting things the brain finds a way to dread. The skin on our fingertips is among the most sensitive in the animal kingdom, after only crocodile faces (might hypersensitivity figure into crocodile-caliber aggression?). Their mechanoreceptors respond to lacunae and threats as small as 13 nanometers in amplitude. (For comparison: A sheet of paper is about 100,000 nm thick.) At this degree of sensitivity, fingertips can find discontinuities the mind may not be able to brook. Minuscule potholes in the surface of magazine paper, for example, can for some clash disagreeably with its apparent glossiness.
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