You, me and a centipede
As my teenage daughter stood shrieking in the bathroom, yelling C-E-N-T-I-P-E-D-E!!!!!!!!! at the top of her lungs, I thought there must be a lesson embedded in this moment somewhere.
After years of squishing, flicking, mashing and snuffing out the lives of countless spiders, flies, and cockroaches, doing in a centipede has always been the worst and wants to make me scream too.
The leggy creature was perched on the wall, cleverly hidden behind a FACE towel. Not too long ago, while in the kitchen, I almost drank one in my morning cup of water. So, I could either do without water from now on, or go at it once again with a wad of tissues- which is what I did.
Bye-bye centipede.
Oh, right, the lesson? Well, after killing the furry beast, and my daughter had composed herself, I was reminded of the scene in "Seven Years in Tibet" when the monks saved all the worms from certain death during a construction project.
So I asked myself, aren't the centipede and I bretheren of some kind? We're all interconnected in this Web of life, even the ickiest of us, aren't we? Sure, a centipede is creepy, clever and secretive, but I can be those things too! While it has far more legs than I, we both have the same aim in life: simply to get our drink of water in the morning and keep on shufflin' on.
Lesson learned: Live and let live (but don't tell this to my daughter).
This site uses Facebook comments to make it easier for you to contribute. If you see a comment you would like to flag for spam or abuse, click the "x" in the upper right of it. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use.