The Roach Mafia

The other day, in my old apartment...

Wait, lets back up in a horrible show of writing flow and continuity so I can explain something. I say "the other day" when I mean an indeterminate time in the past. It substitutes for phrases such as "last year," "two days ago," and "earlier today," even though earlier today definitely shouldn't qualify as "other" unless something truly bizarre went down like an alien invasion or a nomination for president. You know, something world changing (for me, obviously - I'm narcissistic like that). In this particular case, "the other day" means early July or late June, after BFFC moved in, during the middle of the summer.

So, the other day, in my old apartment, a roach flew in while BFFC and I were about to make the trek to take out the garbage (I like to take it to the dumpster even though i get charged for the convenience of a "valet" can every month). This is in the middle of summer in the South, so roaches are freakin' everywhere - to the point that someone with a real debilitating fear of them would be in a hermetically sealed room in the fetal position, waiting for the good drugs to take the crawly things away. There are tree roaches (the big mofos that are like, 2 inches long),  those little end-of-your-thumb-sized red roaches that pile up in little suicidal piles around light sources that for some reason I always associate with the bathrooms at state park campgrounds, what optimistic people call "June bugs" which are actually roaches in a clever, shiny disguise, and your standard "Oh my sweet Lord kill it with a hammer*" roaches that are found in gross apartments year-round. I do not have a gross apartment most of the time, but this particular apartment is at ground level and set back into a hill, so while air conditioning tended to be cheaper due to earth insulation, bugs tended to be a serious issue because I was invading on their buggy kingdoms.



In other and fewer words, a roach flying in when the door is open for a fraction of a second isn't unprecedented, just unexpected. I myself am not particularly fond of roaches (read: I HATE THE LITTLE BUGGERS with a FIERY PASSION of DEATH), so I had a normal reaction - which is, I freaked out like a cat unexpectedly confronted with a shower. I started screaming a little (not full-blown "I'm being murdered" screaming, more like "I just shook hands with Ben Browder" squealing mixed with "terror inducing bug in my living room" high pitched noise), which set off BFFC, who didn't even see the roach yet, but just knew I was freaking out.

On a side note, this "sympathetic freaking out" happens all the time, to just about everyone. If you've ever been at a LAN party or a horror movie with that one chick (I am that "one chick" at horror movies - even if i don't scream, I'll jump like a startled frog), you know this is true.

I grabbed the hammer I conveniently had laying on my side table (shut up, it's perfectly normal. I was using it to flatten bottle caps... also perfectly normal) and totally killed the roach.

Except I didn't kill the roach.

I had, in fact, turned the roach into a paraplegic. It was still alive, but now in immeasurable roachy pain, desperately trying to scurry away with its insides now on its outsides. BFFC had by this point realized what we were freaking out about (I may have been shouting KILLIT! over and over), and we then had the following conversation (stage directions are in italics, BFFC's lines are in green, mine are in blue - feel free to act this out with a friend):

"IT'S NOT DEAD!"

"I KNOW!"

"GET SOMETHING TO PICK IT UP WITH! EEEW!"

BFFC brings over a plastic bag and scoops up the still pathetically squirming roach


"IT'S STILL NOT DEAD!"

"JUST LET IT DIE"

"I CAN'T LET IT SUFFOCATE! WE ARE NOT THE ROACH MAFIA!"

"JUST LET IT DIE!!"

"PUT IT DOWN ON THE TABLE"

BFFC puts it down on the side table again, now encased in a plastic bag. I aim carefully and smash it on the head with the hammer like Yzma on a bad day. We then continue our conversation in hysterical all caps for no discernible reason.


"TAKE IT OUTSIDE"

"OKAY! WE NEED TO CLEAN THE TABLE"

"I'VE GOT WIPES"

"OKAY! YOU CLEAN THE TABLE, I'LL TAKE OUT THE TRASH!"

"OKAY!"

I walk outside. pause. both of us erupt in hysterical laughter.


from inside: "I CAN HEAR YOU!"


me from outside: "I KNOW, OUR WALLS ARE CRAP!"

more laughter.


The roach mafia would not approve.

* this will make much more sense (hopefully) by the end of this post. Which you are now at, if you didn't bother to scroll down to see what the asterisk was about. So you know.