It's hard to be the cool teacher when you flail like a little girl

Josh:

I have this bad habit of having my entire body spasm in a vain attempt to swat it away whenever something flies near me . Imagine you are walking down the road and then something big and dark flies at your face so your body says, "KILL IT! SWEET JESUS, KILL IT!" and does a sort of special-ed-dance-swat-thing and completely misses what turns out to be a fly. You realize that it was a fly, push your hair back to the side and look around to see multiple Koreans staring at you, asking with their eyes, "What the hell just happened?" What's the best option at this point? For some reason your mind then says, "STRUT! Strut and then say 'Wud up?' to the 70 year old woman like she actually understands you and everything will be better!" So you obey your mind for some reason and proceed to try to walk like a peacock and give the head nod "What up" to the old lady and continue on your merry way.

Unfortunately, that would be awesome if that wasn't a fairly common occurrence with me. I can't help it. Ever since I was young I have always had an innate fear of bees and wasps. When I got here, I saw that the bees and wasps were about five times as big as the ones back in America and that only compounded the problem. What if I'm actually allergic to bee stings? I'm allergic to everything else in the world, would it really be that far of a stretch to imagine that I'm allergic to POISON? I've talked to other teachers about this problem and they say they do the same thing. I had one teacher tell me that a bee managed to get into her room so she ran into a corner and hid with all of her kids around her. One of her students then said, "Teacher! You're bigger! Kill it!" to which she replied, "SHUT UP! It'll hear you!" and then offered the child to her new dark master, the mighty bee.

As the title suggests, it's really hard to be cool when you act like a little baby when a fly comes by (and you think it's some sort of demon wasp out for you unborn children). I feel that I'm pretty good at being "the cool teacher":

I taught my kids all variations of the phrase, "What's up?" and I frequently use it when I see them

When asked what I like to do I said, "Oh, I play the guitar." (brush my hair back and flex at this point) to which the students say, "Oooh! WOW!"

Then they ask, "Teacher! Favorite sport?" to which I slyly reply, "Oh, I like to box. You know, kickboxing." and the chorus responds, "TEACHER! SCARY! WOW!" and I push the envelope more saying as I stretch a little, "Yeah, I also like to do MMA style fighting. I used to want to do it, but now I just teach." and of course, "WOW TEACHER!"

"Teacher! Favorite music?" and of course I say, "Metal, baby! *horns thrown up* And I also dabble in some gangsta rap."
"Teacher rapper? Teacher rapper?"
"Yeah, I'm kind of a thing in California."

Imagine all of the cool points I have with these kids now. I even killed a massive spider in front of them without even flinching and the kids said, "Oooh tough guy!"

Now, if you will, picture your students surrounding you as you head home when the evil fly/bee hybrid flies past your head and you act like you just got hit with a jolt of electricity. Then you hear a sound. What could it be? It's the sound of all your cool points drifting off into the void as your students stare at you with mouths wide open. So what does your mind tell you to do this time?

Scream "YOU DON'T KNOW ME!" and run home.

Just thought I'd let you know...