So I've been
bouncing around a lot of places recently, between Chapel Hill and Hickory and
Granite Falls and Boone, and I've been visiting friends and congratulating and
bemoaning and all sorts of things. It's been a red letter kind of
month/year/week/thing. I've been, at
times, as good of a friend and as bad of a friend as I can be, and I wonder how
a person can equally regret and admire the same expanse of time.
In one of my more
admirable periods, I was at a friend's apartment, celebrating graduation and
pet-sitting and any one of a number of remarkable things that have happened in
this friendship, and my friend discovered a cockroach in her kitchen. Of course
she screams and of course she yells for me and I respond with a "What am I
supposed to do about it?" And she goes on and describes how big it is and
how terrible it is and how I have to kill it, just kill it pleasepleaseplease.
So I walk into the kitchen to find it and I don't see it. I move the trashcan
and the recycling and the bag of plastic grocery bags and no monster cockroach.
I declare that it's gone back where it came from, but she's not convinced. We
have to drive this thing out or kill it trying because it is a freak of nature
and also gross. So I go back to the kitchen and then check out the laundry room
and HOLY APPLES AND NUTELLA THAT IS A GIANT COCKROACH RUNNING UNDER THE DRYER.
After several
minutes of panicking and laughing and not wanting to show very real fear and
convincing and kicking the dryer, I persuade my friend that the cockroach has
gone back where it came from and that she can sleep safely tonight. We watch a
few episodes of Friends and call it a night.
Then tonight, after
returning to my apartment, I walk through the living room to my bedroom in the
dark, because I'm lazy and because it's kinda awesome how the human memory can
prevent me from stubbing my toe on our couch, and then I flip on the lamp
in my room and go into my bathroom and look up because in the top corner of my
bathroom is the largest cockroach I have ever seen in my life ever.
What follows here is
a real conversation held via text messaging.
Me (11:39pm): [sends
picture of the Hulk of cockroaches] This is on my bathroom wall.
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Me (11:46pm): Sarai,
I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation. THERE IS A GIANT
COCKROACH IN MY BATHROOM. MY BED IS ON
THE FLOOR.
Me: [definitely
regrets the decision to not buy a bed and refuses to consider the continuing
metaphorical symbolism of this moment because THAT THING COULD SURVIVE A
NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST (DON'T THINK I HAVEN'T CONSIDERED IT YOU INVASIVE SPECIES
FROM THE BEYOND.)]
Sarai (11:46pm): OH
MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO KILL IT!!!!!!
Sarai (11:47pm): BE
BRAVE AND STRONG. I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT.
Me (11:48pm): BUT
WHAT SHOULD I DO? AND HOW DID IT FIND ME?
Me (11:50pm): IT'S
UNHUMANLY LARGE. THERE'S NO WAY TO KILL IT.
Sarai (11:50 pm): IT
SNIFFED YOU OUT BECAUSE IT REMEMBERED YOUR SCENT FROM WHEN IT WAS AT MY PLACE.
HOW THE HELL DID IT CRAWL UP THREE STORIES. DO YOU HAVE A GIANT SHOE?
Me: [goes to
bathroom. Faces off with cockroach. Thinks momentarily about how the first
thing I wanted to know was what action I could take and the second thing I
wanted to know was how this happened to me and how that's really kinda how my
life goes. Realizes I'm going to need a bigger container if I'm going to capture this
sucker. Drops the plastic cup. Goes to get bucket o' markers from closet. That'll do. Dumps markers on
bed. Balances on rim of tub and toilet. Squeals like a tiny scared child when
the cockroach moves like the ninja it is when prodded by magazine. (I know I'm
an adult now because I'm using one of my roommate's old Victoria's Secret
catalogues to potentially destroy this threat to my safety.) Traps the
cockroach. Runs it outside. Dumps the bucket. Watches it crawl down between the
boards in my porch. Closes porch door. Double fist in the air. I AM THE MASTER COMMANDER! Returns to phone.]
Sarai (11:56pm): DID
IT EAT YOU BEFORE YOU COULD KILL IT?
I responded just
before midnight with confirmation of a successful capture and release
("CAPTURE AND RELEASE? IT'S GONNA COME BACK HERE!") and accidentally
tweeted my promise to call in case more cockroach situations arose and
generally felt accomplished for the night.
Now, I tell you this
because I basically ran back to my computer to write about this little
adventure. It's just that I can't decide what I want the cockroach to stand
for. Part of me wants to say something like, "Hey, why do we all just
diametrically hate cockroaches anyway? I mean, they don't bite.* They don't
really affect our lives. All they do is freak us out and if I'm applying this
kind of banishing logic to things that freak me out, then I'm not the kind of
person I want to be." Because, after all, getting rid of something that
freaks me out but isn't going to hurt me isn't the best use of my time.
Especially if it was already illegal and I decided to put a poorly-phrased
amendment to a popular vote just to prove how much work there is to be done
still.
Or, I could make the
cockroach a metaphor instead of a talking point. Make it something completely
different. I mean, it's something I reacted poorly to, and then did my best to
get rid of. Maybe I could make it be sin in my metaphor for life. I like that.
I helped my friend address her sin, but let it get away, giving her the
opportunity to conquer it on her own once she knew it could be conquered. Yeah,
I like that! But no, that won't work because when I was in my own apartment, I
stood there and talked to it for a good couple of seconds, thinking that would
either scare it or convince it to leave me alone. When that didn't work, I
closed my eyes and wished it would go away. Twice. In the end, I actually had
to do something to make it go away, and before I could do that, I had to admit
to someone that there was a problem in the form of a giant, scary cockroach. I
had to admit that my apartment, nice though it is, still has the potential to
have cockroaches and I'm sorry, but that's too difficult of a message to hear
if the cockroach were going to be a metaphor for sin.
(Plus, cockroaches
don't eat you from the inside out until you can't think straight anymore and
make you want to go back to the days before you even knew what a cockroach
looked like, not in real life anyway. They don't make you sit up nights
thinking or lose days dreaming ways out of messes that you didn't even think
were possible for you. They don't make you shake your head involuntarily while
you chorus I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry can I take it back I didn't mean to
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I never did anything just please I'm sorry. Plus,
there's nowhere you can go that's guaranteed to be cockroach free. And, most
importantly of all, cockroaches never make you feel warm and happy on the
inside, even just for a second, so that you think hey, this side of innocent
might not be so bad. It just wouldn't work; cockroaches are not complex. But,
like sin, they'd survive a nuclear holocaust. So there's a point in the
positive category.)
It's just that I
need to go back to thinking, you know? So if I made the cockroach the
equivalent of some problem I was having my everyday life, or dealing with it a
symbol of my burgeoning adulthood (I also got the oil changed in my car and put
money in my savings account!), it would just be this tacit acceptance that
cockroaches are a part of life, that everyone has to deal with them sometime.
But let's face it- some people never come of age, and some people's coming of
age story is much less interesting and cockroach-free than books and movies
would like to imply. When you realize that your story falls into that category,
it makes you want to go out and get a testimony, go live and do something and
not make the safe choice. Then again, it might not matter what you do.
Cockroaches find you anyway.
All of this is to
say that even though this is a weird, difficult, awkward, and awesome time of
life, and even though I don't know what's going on and can't figure out what
things mean, if they mean anything, it's still great to have friends who can go
through all of this with you. Even if all you really want is someone to come in
kill the cockroach for you with his giant shoe.
*(PS- I have since learned that cockroaches eat the eyelashes of sleeping children. I retract this idea for cockroaches. But I stand by the sentiment that goes along with the original thought, pre-eyelash-eating-revelation.)
