Supremacy

 

Ever since childhood they’d called me Champion. In school, at work, in the gym, just about everybody would greet me as Champion. (Even our mood-disordered vicar, who wouldn't call anybody by first name or nickname even if his life depended on it, brought himself to address me Mr. Champion once or twice.)

 

Frankly, the only rationale for this exaggerated cognomen was that while the other centipedes had one hundred legs, I sported one hundred and one. This relatively small advantage was enough to catapult me into living legend, and the moniker clung like an Olympic gold or a Novel Prize.

 

My personality cult flourished in every possible aspect of public life. I couldn’t order an expensive meal in a posh restaurant without affluent centipedes present offering to foot the bill. Getting ticket to sold-out ball games would only be a phone call away. My reputation for being exceptional was aided by my taciturn approach to others, which the public took for modesty. I would be interviewed on TV regularly on social and political issues, of which I knew nothing about, but announcing “We shall soon see, just you mark my words” would be quoted in every major paper the following day.

 

Life was going swimmingly until a youngster, recent Harvard or Columbia graduate, discovered that my 101st leg was only a dry grass blade attached to my ass.

 

Blimey! You send them away to college to pick up culture or learn a useful profession, and they come back as foul-mouthed radical subversives hell bent on upsetting the apple cart.

 

 

First published in Dissident Voice, August 22, 2025.