Why do some sensations rub us up the wrong way, make our skin creep and
crawl, or make our teeth stand on edge? The sound of chalk on blackboard
is a well known one.

Skin creeping sensations come in two flavours: oral and aural. Some
nasty oral skin creeps are: the feeling of sand in your mouth (particularly
on your teeth), getting a mouthful of tea leaves in the last mouthful of
tea, and nibbling emery boards (try it!). Some repellent aural skin
creeps are: magic markers on white boards, opening polystyrene boxes, and
garden brooms on concrete paths. And the weird thing is we all have our
own.

And that's why we want to know what makes your skin crawl. Start a conversation below on your (least) favourite topic, and we'll compile a definitive list of things that make us shudder. Over to you...

• Chunks of Sour Milk You know if you leave a carton of milk out of a fridge for a week or so, and then you pour it down the sink, or even worse, unexpectedly into your mouth? The sound of this is just unmistakable - "Kerchunk, kerchunk, splot".
• Cottage Cheese The only thing it doesn't do is wiggle! Sometimes it's even got pineapple added in, for that extra cringe factor.
• Porridge The texture reminds us of mucous. Need we say more?
• Smoked Salmon The texture, the taste, the sliminess. Ugh!
• King Size Prawns which tend to render visual images of brains and eyes and intenstines.
• Chewing Gum Who in their right mind decided to invent something that makes everybody look and sound like a bunch of cows chewing the cud?

• Dogs staring at you for long periods of time for no reason whatsoever.
• Mice and that scratching noise under the floorboards on a quiet night
• Wasps and Bees Those stinging mosters that ruin any chance you will ever have at a calm sun bathing session. Our advice is to hide, leaving them until someone braver can get rid of them.
• Flies In Your Lemonade ...to swallow or spit in polite company?
• Fish Slimy and eerie, with staring eyes, and just all-around nasty creatures.
• Jellyfish Why are they so disgustingly gelatinous?
• Maggots Has anybody ever discovered an item of food that is well past it's use-by date¹ that has been populated by maggots? Or even worse, finding a dead animal and then noticing that it seems to be moving, and on closer inspection...
• Flying Spiders They are not flying spiders by the way - they are 'Crane Flies'. However, they appear to be spiders, and they appear to fly. The stuff of nightmares.
• Slugs and Snails Slimy and often found underfoot, apparently salting them is even worse than stepping on them.
• The Whole Microscopic World Scientists insist that some of those little mites and teenyweeny bugs are required because they serve useful purposes. There's even bacteria in our stomachs which allegedly help in the digestion process. Ewww!
• Cockroaches Huge brown greasy looking things that wave their feelers at you in a malicious way. Having a cockroach enter one's ear is a common experience in some areas. Suggested methods of removal include warm oil, cold water and local anasthetic. Sleep well tonight!

• Dolls Especially those Victorian style china ones. They look too spooky.
• Clowns

• Going through someone else's pockets before doing the laundry. You don't know what you might find. If you are very lucky it might be money² , but it maybe a wet snotty hankie with two sweets stuck to it.

• The Sound of People Eating manages to set a number of us on edge, particularly when people slurp their drinks (or soup), or do an intake of breath with each mouthful. So next time you go out to dinner, mind your manners. We're listening!
• Dentist Drills Some of our researchers are pretty sure that if Satan exists anywhere in this world, he's a dentist. What's really terrible is when they're drilling your teeth, and it makes that awful squealing noise, and odd-smelling smoke comes out of your mouth. Almost as though R2D2 is in there, being tortured.
  
• Chairs being dragged on marble or stone floors.
• The State of Music Doesn't anyone make records for the love of music anymore? The principle is all the same - some winsome sappy lyrics and a big tune that somehow lacks melody with lots of suspended chords and drawn-out M6ths to create a sense of import in the empty words for the "proper" singers and a simple lack of anything for the dancey crap. The culprits our researchers named included Celine Dion, Rod Stewart, Steps, Piper, Spears, Sash!, Vengaboys, ATB, Charlotte "Voice of an Angel" Church, Aled Jones, Britney Spears, Spice Girls, Ricky Martin, NSync, Faithless. You be the judge.

• "Special" People are referred to as "special", tourists say "your country is so special," and the word is used to describe a 5% discount on a retail product. Even worse is when obnoxious little twelve-year-olds try to make it trendy by shortening it to 'spesh'. As in: "come and look at my new stereo, it's really spesh."
• Misuse of the word "bitter" "I am just so bitter". Unless you've been dipped in lemon or lime juice³, you shouldn't use the word this way!
• "Moist" in just about any context.
• "Panties" Dunno, just hate it.⁴
• Swearing Without Thinking For example, to say of a cold day, "Man, it is cold as hell outside." I mean, duh.

• Needles, poking into us, poking into others. Why can't they just give us all pills for whatever the problem is?
• People touching our Belly Buttons
• Nose and Ear Hairs
• Big warts with a huge tuft of hair in them, usually found on older women...can't they get rid of them?
• Necrotising Fasciitis This is a life threatening bacterial infection that literally 'eats' your flesh. Truly gruesome!

• Cotton Wool There is a theory that this one goes back to hideous visits to the dentist. The dreaded material seems to melt into the fingers with a difficult to describe crinckly feeling.