Tanglephobia – My Fear of Knots and Tangles
Shôn Ellerton, March 3, 2025
My lifelong struggle with knots and tangles. And it seems to only happen to me!
I suffer from ‘tanglephobia’ and I have no idea what to do about it.
Let me explain what this strange condition is.
Anything, and I mean anything that can be tangled up, knotted, folded, balled up, knitted, woven, coiled, or tied up often turns out to be a bloody nuisance or even a nightmare to deal with. And the most frustrating thing is that I seem to be the only person with this peculiar affliction.
Perhaps it stems from childhood. I don’t know. Lord knows how many times as a child I had to contend with untying a simple bow from my shoe only to find out that I stuffed it up leaving a small knot as dense as a neutron star, in which one has to resort to using a sharp implement like a knitting needle or a metal chopstick to disentangle it. On occasion, I might pull the correct loose end to loosen the bow, but no, I seem to be possessed with some curse which makes this most simple of tasks end up being frustratingly impossible like untying the legendary Gordian Knot. For those not in the know, it is alleged that Alexander the Great was presented with a complex knot to untie but being frustrated by it, simply used his sword to cut it. This story is well known and often cited as an allusion to using brute force to surmount some intractable problem.
Cutting the Gordion Knot
Although not knot or tangle-related in any way, others are often exacerbated with the process of extricating an object from one of those nuclear-proof hard plastic surrounds that buyers from outlets like electronic or tool shops have to contend with. For example, trying to remove a small flash card out of an unnecessarily large clear hard plastic cover or worse, removing a new pair of scissors. Should you, by chance, had another pair of scissors conveniently to hand to open the package containing the scissors, that’s all well and good but I would allege that most people who buy a pair of scissors do so because they do not have a pair of scissors and, thus, need to buy a pair!
Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm struggling to open up a hard plastic box containing a small item
But back to tangles, folds, and knots.
The most fundamental of situations seem to be dastardly annoying and frustrating. Such as the dreaded phenomenon of trying to arrange a bedsheet around you in the middle of the night. Continental duvets have largely made this not so much of an issue anymore, but I remember the way the British make their beds. Sheet after sheet, then a blanket, and possibly a quilt. For any other person besides me, it seems glaringly simple. You lift up the corner of the sheet, slide in, and have a good night’s sleep. Not with me. I get in and I fidget around trying to loosen the sheets because the British love to tuck in the sheets so tightly around the bed, I feel like I’m being packed like a sardine in a tin. Now, after some much required fidgeting, the sheets are loosened, but I will wake up in the middle of the night being half exposed not having any idea where the corners of the sheet are leaving me no option but to switch on the light to assess the situation.
Many pastimes and activities often give me tanglephobia, which is a shame, because it makes them so less enjoyable for me.
My late father had owned a few sailboats in his time and often took me out with him sailing the windswept shores of Essex in England. Most people who didn’t enjoy the experience of sailing attribute it to cold weather, being waterlogged half the time, or being jiggled around on the boat for several hours at a time trying not to be sick overboard. I had none of those problems. I hated anything to do with dealing with knots, ropes (or should I say sheets to use sailing parlance), or vast areas of sails which seem intent on doing anything else apart from being compliant and controllable. Perhaps I have unfavourable memories of being shouted at while holding the end of a rope and jumping across a gap of cold grey choppy water in strong winds to secure the boat by tying the rope to a cleat on marina pontoons. My father had one leg but it didn’t stop him from chasing his pursuits. Problem was that he ordered and gophered anyone else to do all the physical stunt work.
This leads me to camping.
I’m no fan of camping just for the sake of camping. Camping is often a necessity to achieve something like climbing a mountain or going on one of those long epic hikes, both of which, I enjoy very much. The primary point of camping is to keep warm during the night and rest. Sure, it can be fun with a campfire accompanied with conversation, burgers and a shot of whisky or two, but that’s where it ends. Not withstanding all the other character vagaries associated with camping like being drenched with sweat on warm nights, being assaulted by midges and flies, and contending with a whole bunch of other things out there with the sole purpose of either eating you or harming you, like snakes, cougars and bears.
The biggest problem with camping is all the crap one has to deal with to set it up. Being once an avid mountaineer in Colorado, I read vast tomes of books published by the Sierra Club. How to erect tents, bivouacs, snow caves, and even teepees. I got to be quite a technical expert in theory, but in practice? Different story.
Erecting and dismantling campsites always involves ropes and fabrics, unless you’re building a snow cave. Of course, there’s all the other stuff you need like food containers, clothes, sleeping bags, tables, chairs, and cooking equipment. That means you have to haul out all this stuff unless you’re just parking nearby, in which case, wouldn’t it be simply easier to sleep in the car? Regular pastime campers usually have big vehicles making it easy to lay a sleeping bag in the back with the comfort of being hermetically sealed from the elements and bothersome pests.
When one purchases a tent, it often comes packaged within a perfectly-fitted bag. I purchased one not long ago from Aldi, not renowned for specialist camping equipment I admit, and after opening the box, I then proceeded to open the drawstring of the bag containing the tent. I had to pull it out like a sausage and once out it immediately exploded in the air and settled flat on the ground. Folds of fabric everywhere with little in the way of knowing what to do next. The instructions, thankfully, were reasonably clear and after a little struggle or two, managed to erect the tent. Bear in mind that this was during a calm night on a flat grassy field next to my son’s school with plenty of other people to help. It was Camping Out with Dad night at my son’s school by the way. But imagine doing this on a windswept edge of a barren peak in the middle of the Andes.
As for returning the tent to its original bag. Not a hope in Hell would have achieved this. As if by some act of witchcraft, the tent became double the size from what it was when disassembled. Having given up, I ended up dividing the original setup in two large bags, which defeats the purpose of carting around a portable tent.
Unfortunately, there are other activities which involve untangling ropes like rock climbing, a pastime I once really used to enjoy. Naturally, this involves ropework and usually to a very high standard, which is understandable considering this is one’s lifeline should one fall off the rock. There are, of course, those daring free solo climbers who don’t use ropes at all, but in my view, that seems borderline suicidal, although those free solo climbers will explain, philosophically, that it represents utter freedom and being at one with the rock, or something of that ilk.
These days, the nightmare of dealing with tangles, is mostly garden based.
Let’s start with the humble garden hose.
For everyone else, they can coil a garden hose in perfect circles with no kink anywhere across its entire length. However, when I do it, the hose wants to go the other way trying to inject an annoying figure-of-eight in an otherwise neat coil. Thinking I can outwit the hose, I start again going the other way, only to find out that again, the hose wants to change direction. After some time thinking about this, I retraced my steps on how I was using the hose and it transpired that I spend most of my time turning counterclockwise, thus, gradually twisting up the hose.
Next up is thin metal wire, something I had to use recently to add to a mesh cage to keep out the birds from eating my lawn seed. Now, for those reading this might have come to the conclusion that I’m not a handy person, but that’s not true. I have no problem with building retaining walls, doing landscaping, construction work, or even doing some floor tiling. I built the mesh cage by cutting it to size and connecting the sides with aviary C-clips, which, unfortunately did not work because the mesh size was too big. I had the bright idea of buying some thin metal wire which I could use to fill in the gaps. The finished product did work, however, the wire was a nightmare to unravel. It came sold on a little metal wire drum, and once released from its little cage holding it in place, the wire literally exploded in hundreds of large tangled coils of making it virtually impossible to extract a long length without spending hours trying to wheedle out a length by pushing the end of the wire through the centre and pulling it out. It looked like a Slinky that had been stretched out of recognition by a gang of rowdy schoolboys. The process of extracting decent lengths of wire became so laborious that I simply cut it up in several locations hoping that I would get a few long pieces of it.
Australian magpie with a mission to destroy my lawn
The nemesis of all tangles and handling in the garden has to be dealing with tree netting, to keep the birds from eating the fruit. I recently bought a net from Amazon or Temu, can’t remember which. The net came neatly bundled in a coil, but as soon as I released it, it instantly tangled, to the point that I had to throw it away. It was made from a fine green plastic mesh and seemed good at the price. The picture on the package showed it perfectly wrapped around a fruit tree, but in reality, it was a piece of cheap plastic which had to be thrown away as it was utterly hopeless to even think about trying to use it to net a tree.
Ultimately, for me, anything that does not require dealing with ropes or excessively complex bits of large fabric is a major plus. Perhaps I’m not patient enough leading to that ever deepening spiral of frustration and anger trying to deal with tangles and knots. Putting on my conspiracy hat, I even feel there is some jinx or curse making my life a misery when it comes to knots and tangles.
So, there you have it.
A new affliction which I’d made up.
Tanglephobia!
