The

The When me and my buddy Craig were younger, we did a terrible thing.

Names changed to protect the not-so-innocent, etc.

I'm going to say at the start here, TLDR, y'all have every right to hate me for this.

The amount of guilt I feel is a lot, and I can't even turn myself in and get punished

for it because I already did at the time, and it was treated like we were just kids, and it wasn't

really our fault. Maybe that's true, but I can't accept it. I ruined a guy's life, possibly

forever for all I know, and I did it by using his absolute worst fear

in the world. I didn't know it was his worst fear at the time. How could I? Not many real people

are deathly afraid of mummies. And I have to wonder why he volunteered to take us to the

Egyptian exhibit at our local museum. It was a small suburban

museum which didn't normally get exciting or rare exhibits, so I guess an Egyptian exhibit

was a big deal. But we weren't studying Egypt and middle school, not in any real capacity.

And besides, Mr. Barker was our English teacher. He wasn't our history teacher.

I guess maybe I figured he was interested in ancient Egypt. So then how was I meant to know that he

had a major fear of it? We arrived at the museum, just some of the members from our grade,

and we were accompanied by Mr. Barker and Miss Pace,

the school nurse of all people. Maybe there were other teachers present, and I'm just not really

remembering them correctly. I just remember our small group being guided around the Egypt

exhibit by Mr. Barker, who alternated between really enthusiastic and strangely jumpy. And even then, we didn't put two and two

together to work out that he was getting edgy around the two mummies that were on display.

And after some time, Craig and I got bored and started to linger at the back of the group,

...