Centipede fear

I've always had a morbid fear of centipedes. Or milipedes as some would call it (I think the basic difference lies only in their number of feet).

But the thing about my fear is that; unlike my allergy towards coffee, I could still hide it whenever I need to.

There was one time when three of my classmates in my Bali school (Santo Yosef) back then were playing with an alive (or perhaps, half-dead) centipede and go chasing all the girls (and some boys too) out of the class. A funny kind of bullying indeed, but I've decided that I wasn't going to be intimidated by them.

"Hey, there's Toshi" one of the gang members pointed at me.

I was sitting on a seat at the back of the class, doing my unfinished homework at school. I did my best to feign ignorance.

"Hi, Toshi..." one of them smiled at me and gave me an uneasy look.

A girl not sitting far away from my seat mouthed me the words "There izz a Cen-ti-pede" as to warn me. I glanced at her and gave her the "Thanks-but-I'm-OK-with-that" look and turned facing the three of them.

One of them held the centipede proudly in their hands.

"Umm.. what's that?" I pretend naivety.

"Eh?" they seemed perplexed. "This is centipede, you idiot!"

"Oh, so that's what you call centipede!" I gave a surprised look, "Poor thing, you shouldn't be playing around with it!"

In fact, I couldn't care less if the centipede was dead. If it was alive in the first place, I definitely would have stomped on it with my foot.

Before they went chasing other people to bully, one of them held the centipede dangling on his fingers very closely to my face. I did my best to stay calm and not freak out.

Thank God, I succeeded.

"Ah shit, Toshi's not scared..."

The tallest of them compounded, "Yea, how boring he is.. Let's go!"

There were several other pupils inside the classroom who also looked as if they could care no less, but apparently they have decided to look for other people to bully in other classes.

Haha, bunch of idiots.