My Personal War with Roaches

I'll preface this story by saying that I am not afraid of roaches. They creep me out with their slithery-ness, but I don't feel the need to jump up on the furniture and squeal. I have no trouble stomping on every one I see. I’m just so very tired of the nasty things. With that said, and in fairness to my husband, I must tell this story. It ranks up there with snake killing and bird invasions.

I believe Dave and I have come to a point in our relationship where we have lived together long enough that we are beginning to act like one another. Last night, after the kids were in bed and I’d woken up from my power nap with Ella, we were sitting on the couch together. As is our usual habit, he was lying on one end and I was sitting on the other, legs tangled up in the middle, sharing a quilt. Oddly, last night we were both awake and talking, though I have no idea what about because the events that followed completely erased it from my mind.

As we were chatting, I noticed a big, nasty, flying roach slither through the crack in the front door and make its way up the wall. I considered getting up to kill it right then, but I didn’t want to interrupt Dave, and I’d just gotten comfortable. Dave had no idea it was there because his back was to it. For about fifteen minutes, as we chatted, I tracked its progress all around the crown molding, on top of a picture, and back down the wall.

This is the point where my husband and I swapped personalities.

Suddenly, it launched itself into the air and flew right over Dave’s shoulder and landed on his chest. He exclaimed in surprise, but I was ready. As it was 10:30 and there was nary a flip-flop in sight, I grabbed the rolled up Neighbors magazine from my end table and attempted to smack the life out of it. Again, Dave exclaimed, this time about how hard I hit him. I heard nothing of it; I was singularly focused on killing that blasted roach.

It had disappeared.

I jumped off the couch and ripped the quilt off of Dave, yelling, “It’s in the blanket! Get up! It’s in the blanket!” I have no idea what he said, but he got up.

I kicked the ottoman out of the way and frantically shook the blanket until the roach fell out. Then I took to smacking it with my rolled up magazine. Like a mad woman, I was chasing it around the floor, hitting it for all I was worth, and cursing it with words that aren’t appropriate for writing here. I think it got the message that I believed it to be a piece of something undesirable. All the while, I think Dave was in the kitchen, eating popcorn and watching the show.

Then it disappeared again.

At that point, I lost my composure (if you could say I ever had any). I was squealing and jumping around with hands flailing, screaming for Dave to find it while I ran to the other side of the room. I was terrified that it was going to fly again and land on me.

He calmly moved the chair and grabbed it with a paper towel, while I continued to ask repeatedly if he had found it yet. He held up his fist to show me the balled up paper towel, roach inside. With a sigh of relief, I went back to my spot on the couch.

And this is where we swapped back to our original selves with me watching, and him holding the paper towel roach ball and asking me, “What am I supposed to do with it?”

I said, “Throw it away.”

To which he replied, “It will just crawl out again.”

Uhhh. “What?! It’s not dead? You didn’t kill it?”

He understood his responsibility. He squeezed it in his man fist and said, “I just heard it crunch.”

Again, I breathed a sigh of relief, “Good, as with anything with an exoskeleton, crunching is good.” (I don’t really know if roaches have exoskeletons, but they do crunch when you defeat them.)

He threw it away and left the room, and I started to laugh. He came back and asked me if I was laughing at myself. Yes, yes I was. Then he said, “My favorite part was when you changed from mad killer into our screaming 3 year old.” I could not deny it.