Centipedes

This morning while driving, Sarah, one of the girls I'm working with this summer told me that she found a centipede in the bathroom. It was a couple of days ago, and really small, but one of those hairy ones, with the hundreds of long legs, and feelers! ew! I shuddered, and my eyes grew wider. But then she went on to say that this morning, she found another centipede... but this one was bigger... and she measured her fingers apart... wider and wider... a couple of inches...

And I SCREAMED.

And this was the legitimate, "I'm terrified out of my wits!" scream. Not many people have heard that scream! Okay... that's a lie.

Apparently, I even scared a pedestrian who was crossing the street in front of us and heard my scream. Maybe I was a little dramatic? It just kind of... came out of nowhere.

But now I'm really scared! Of centipedes!? Today, I went to the bathroom, thinking to myself, "don't think of centipedes, don't look for centipedes... stop thinking of centipedes! Frig!" - I mean, you're in a vulnerable position going to the bathroom, and that is the worst possible time I can think of to run into a 6-inch long centipede.

I have a few fears, but this one feels debilitating. There was this one time in Ghana, where there was a scorpion in my room. I was in there with my best friend from high school Anna, and we called Mat into the room because one time he had talked... unusually passionately about how he believed scorpions were the symbol of death, and the archetype of all evil. When he saw the real-life scorpion, he started freaking out, going on about how it was the symbol of death, and "this big, and it can kill you!" and I videotaped it, because it was really funny. But then some of the people came into the guest house with bug spray, and when they sprayed it, the scorpion moved. The moving scorpion suddenly registered in my mind that this bug is real, and can kill me, and it's on my WALL, above my BED... and I screamed! And then Mat took my shoe and smacked the scorpion! Killed it dead! Splat!

Like... is this weird? To be so terrified of a centipede? The scorpion I understand, but those centipedes. Mat's not even around to smack it with a shoe, which means that the responsibility falls on me. Crapface. Oh man, writing this blog entry kind of sucks, because I keep on looking around me and wondering if I'll see a centipede on my sheets or something. They really are nasty creatures. I bet they ARE evil, and ARE the symbol of death.

It's just weird that I'm so, really deeply scream-inducing scared of these things. How does one overcome a fear of centipedes???