When this giant, angry centipede came screaming up my mop handle, straight toward my hands, I didn’t stop to ponder how this might symbolize military life. I was more intent on saving my fingers.
But what began as an encounter with a mutant insect ended with a punch line you just can’t make up.
With suspense, combat and comic relief, the story was great to share at barbecues. People’s faces twisted, their jaws dropped. They laughed heartily and smacked their knees.
But later, I realized this wasn’t just any ordinary story. I’d been smack-dab in the middle of a fantastic analogy.
The Woman I Once Was
I fear centipedes like some people fear spiders.
Fifteen years ago, I lived in a Chicago apartment infested by that giant centipede’s smaller, city-dwelling cousins. They’d scurry across my hallways and lurk on my ceilings.
Watching their impossible number of hairy legs zoom across surfaces would send me dashing to the nearest phone to call my landlady, heart pounding, chest heaving. “Help! The centipedes are back!”
She’d send someone to seal cracks in the baseboards. Centipedes still found their way in.
A year later, I married my airman and moved to Turkey.
One hot day, I opened my back door to find an enormous, red centipede, like the one pictured above, lying on its back on my patio.
I reared back into the doorframe and tripped over the threshold in fright. I was certain this thing could kill me. Then, I did what anyone would do when she’s face-to-face with an insect from a Sci-Fi film: I screamed for my husband.
He took one look at the centipede and went to the kitchen for a pair of salad tongs.
Although he assumed the Turkish sun had cooked the critter to death, he carefully poked it, checking for signs of life. It squirmed limply. In a swift motion, he gripped the centipede with the tongs and launched it into the field behind our house.
Situation resolved… or so I thought.
The Punch Line
Eleven years later, I lived in a different desert: El Paso, Texas.
My husband was deployed.
One morning, I was getting my kids ready for the park and feeling particularly strong and in charge of things.
That’s when I opened the front door. A few feet away, a giant red centipede lay on its back. I gasped and used every limb I had to hold back my two kids and my dog, all of whom wanted to take a closer look. I pulled them inside and slammed the door.
This time, there was no one to call and no time to think. I had only myself. I needed to get my kids to the park, even if it meant facing that Marvel-comic-belonging-centipede.
Quickly, I ran to the laundry room, where I grabbed the first thing I could reach: a duster mop, which has the material of a classic mop in a flat, fringed pad on the bottom.
Back in the front hall, I took deep breath and opened the door to my enemy.
Like my husband had done, I carefully checked to see if the centipede was alive, turning the mop to poke it with the pole’s end.
But, as if the centipede were waiting for me, it flipped over in a snap and charged me straightaway. With all those legs, it could run fast.
Immediately, I turned the mop and began swiffing the centipede down the patio: Swiff! Swiff! Swiff!
Only problem? All that fringe gave the centipede plenty of things to grab onto.
In no time at all, he was climbing up the pole toward me, no doubt filled with life-ending venom saved especially for me.
I banged the mop on the ground several times, trying to dislodge him and screaming, “Get! Off!”
He fell off the mop, onto the ground, and raced toward me again.
And again, I defended myself. Swiff! Swiff! Swiff!
He grabbed onto the fringe. Started quickly back up the pole.
Bang! Bang! “Get! Off!”
We fought like this all the way down the sidewalk, all the way to the curb.
Finally, we reached the curb, and, in one final act of war, as the centipede clung to the fringe, venom locked and loaded, I raised the pole above my head and swung it down onto the street in a strong BANG!, followed by two other powerful blows.
“Get! Off! Get! Off!”
At the last blow, the fringed duster attachment broke off the pole and slid a few feet in front of me.
The centipede rolled several inches beyond it. And he lay there, motionless.
I’d won.
I breathed heavily, hair tousled in front of my face.
As I straightened up, I looked across the street.
There, staring at me, mouths agape, stood a Realtor and a new family, about to walk inside a vacant house across the street.
They’d watched me swiff, bang and curse my mop all the way down the sidewalk.
“Oh, hi,” I stammered. “Um… there was a centipede…”
The Realtor nodded unconvincingly and ushered the family inside.
I stood on the street for a few moments, laughing.
It was easy to laugh at what had just happened. Easy to shake my head, throw up my hands, grab my fringed duster attachment and go inside.
I wasn’t embarrassed. I didn’t have time for that. I was a deployed spouse, and I had a day to get on with, after all.
But later, I would think back on this…
The Analogy
After we spend enough time in the military life, someone will ask us how the lifestyle has changed us. We probably all have a canned response: “I’m stronger,” “I’m more independent,” or “I’m more adaptable.”
These responses are sincere, but taking it a step further and telling our unique – and, okay, sometimes bizarre – stories can reveal much more about our change and growth.
After I told this story a few times, I began to see just how I’d grown. I was no longer someone who rushed to others to face her fears for her. I didn’t recoil or ignore a fear or problem and hope it would go away.
I’d become a person who trusts her own instinctive power to overcome her fears, to surmount obstacles, to brush off judgment and focus on what’s important.
The military life has changed me indeed. The stumbles and falls, the people, the tests, the practice, the tries and tries again – they’ve produced in me something I didn’t have before: the courage to, as Zig Ziglar says, Face Everything And Rise.