Me and caterpillars

The TV program "The Hero" asks if you can volunteer your friends with a certain fear to go on the show while the world watches them make asses of themselves getting over their fears.  Or presumably die trying while successfully having made asses of themselves getting over their fears.  Or just opt for death rather than face their fears, national TV be damned.  One, if you were a true friend, you wouldn't do that, two, if you were a true friend, you really, really, wouldn't do that.  Come on.  There is no way to justify that to the friend you just volunteered to go on TV.  "I'm doing this for your sake, that fear is unhealthy.  Maybe the pressure of being watched by two million people will cure you.  You know I care.  I care a lot" goes against all the rules of decency, friendship, and logic.  The same could be said of any other reality show, which has none of those rules, or any rule whatsoever.

My friends, because they are my friends, would not want to me to go on that show, since they know that I am ridiculously afraid of caterpillars.  They know I already look like a screaming ninny when caterpillars pop up, so volunteering me on national TV would be redundant ten million ratings over.

It started, like almost all fears we carry with us to adulthood, when I was yea high.  I forget the time span of the caterpillar attacks, I just remember them happening one after another, perhaps on the same day.  When I was with my parents in our makeshift garden and a green caterpillar with something that looks like a skirt on its sides landed on the back of my hand.  When a playmate yelled and pointed to my behind because a fat, black caterpillar was hanging on to my skirt.  When I had my back against a wall and my sister yelled and pointed to my head, since a fat, orange caterpillar was crawling towards my head, looking like am undulating, charging Agamemnon.  When I was speaking to my sister who, you guessed, yelled and pointed at my shoulder, where a fat, gray caterpillar was fatly lounging around with anime hair all over.  Why in heaven's name do these things stick to just me, with all the other people around?   Why do these things even have to be?  Why do I suddenly feel itchy all over?

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