TMIT: *Shudder*

Well guys, it’s the final TMI Thursday hosted by the lovely and ever-hilarious Lilu. When I got to thinking about the grossest thing I could think of, I didn’t up come with a story about poop or vomit…no. The one thing that makes me truly shudder (and jump up on a chair) is not a bodily function, but a mutant creature put on this earth to outlive us all:

cockroaches.

So you’ve been warned. If you can’t handle a traumatic insect-related experience, move along now.

I had just moved into my first-ever solo apartment after graduating college. I was teaching preschool and the only thing I could afford was a tiny little efficiency in a not-so-awesome part of town. I had finally gotten all of my stuff from the old place to the new one, and I had boxes and shit covering just about every inch of that 375 square foot closet of a home.

It was my first night in the apartment, and I had been working for most of the evening on unpacking things and shoving/hiding/creatively concealing things so that I could walk “through” the apartment without tripping over anything (you know, all 10 feet of it). I went to move a laundry basket full of miscellany when I saw it – the first (of MANY) cockroaches I would encounter in the 6 months I lived there. It scurried off under some other box or piece of furniture, and I decided that instead of move things to try and chase it down, I would just wait until I saw it again and squish it then.

This is the part of the story where it’s important to point out that I don’t do cockroaches. Like, at all. If the choices are I kill it or it continues to scurry around, possibly on my face in my sleep later that night, then I will suck it up and beat it senseless with the longest thing I can find from as far away as possible. But if there is ANY alternative (read: talking a 6 year old boy into doing it while babysitting), I will be standing on the nearest piece of furniture screaming “KILL IT! KILL IT! KILL IT!”

Flattering, I know.

So yes. I decided to wait it out. I knew I would see my foe again.

Twenty minutes later, I’m hammering away trying to hang some photos on the wall near my bed, when I turn around and see it; the damn thing has crawled all the way up the wall and is hanging out over the door near the ceiling.

It was time. But now the situation was further complicated by the fact that I first had to knock it down off the wall before I could beat it well past the point of death with a shoe or other object. As I’m sure you can imagine, I was not pleased with this development, as I had very little control over where the thing landed after I knocked it off the wall. Like, what if it landed on my face? Or even my foot?

Pardon me while I vomit.

So I grab the broom (I had a broom! Look at me all prepared and shit.) and take a few deep breaths (because we are already nearing full-on panic attack at this point), and swipe at it with the broom. It falls off the wall but quickly scurries under a trashbag I was using as I unpacked.

I’m already freaking the fuck out, so I figure I might as well finish this thing. I move stuff around, trying fruitlessly to immobilize it with the broom. After it became clear that wasn’t going to work, I grabbed the nearest shoe and managed to knock enough life out of it that it could no longer escape. I gave it a few hundred more whacks (you know, just to be sure) before clutching my chest and catching my breath and trying not to cry.

Only it’s not over yet. Cause now I have to get the thing out of my apartment ohmygawrightnowGETITOUT. But the thought of it anywhere near my actual hand, even through 1000 layers of tissues, is more than I can stomach. So once I calm down a bit (that is a very relative statement), I realize I can just sweep it out with a broom (thank God for that fake wood “entryway”). I cleared a path and proceeded to sweep it all the way out into the parking lot before I was satisfied that it was dead and far enough away from me that it could not magically wake up and come seek its revenge.

At that point, I was flat out hyperventilating. I picked up the phone to call SJB (remember he lived there with me shortly thereafter…and killed many a cockroach) and was still pretty hysterical when he answered the phone:

“Hey babe! What’s up?”
“Giant…cockroach. Wall…over door. Killed it…NOT OK.”
“Wait, what? Slow down. What happened?”
“There was a cockroach! It crawled up the wall over the door and I had to knock it down! I killed it but I AM NOT OK.”
“Mary. Seriously? A cockroach? Calm down. It’s just a bug.”
“NOT OK. NOT A BUG. COCKROACH.”

And so on for a few more minutes before he managed to calm me down to the point that I wasn’t sweating profusely and nearly in tears.

Little did he know it was a precursor to a month of “OMG KILL IT!” including one time I woke him up because I dumped one out of the bottom of the cat food bag before work one morning. I am a lovely girlfriend, promise.