Okay, it’s
week 28, and I’ve not written anything in this essay challenge since January.
It’s time to get going.
Why start
with cockroaches, you may wonder. Maybe it’s because I saw one of the big ones,
the American cockroach (brown, about an inch and a half long), in my bathroom,
huddled by the toilet. Naturally, since it’s July, I was barefoot. When I
returned, sandaled, it was no longer visible, but was it still in the room? I
walked in slowly, eyeing the area around the toilet, nudged the basket of
magazines next to the toilet—and it came slithering out. I tried to stomp on
it, but it zigged and zagged too quickly for my slowing reflexes, and dashed
back behind the toilet. I needed a weapon.
All I had,
though, was a sponge mop. I got it from the cleaning closet and went back to
the bathroom. It was still in hiding. I pushed at the basket with the mop, out
raced the cockroach. I bashed at it with the mop, but again, it escaped. The
mop was no good.
Now I
remembered a folk roachacide I’d read about: rubbing alcohol. So I filled my
little sprayer bottle and returned to the bathroom. This time the cockroach was
nowhere. I nudged the basket; nothing. Looked all around the white floor;
nothing. Got into the bathtub so I could peer behind the toilet; nothing. It
had either squeezed into whatever hole it had sneaked out of, or it was roaming
the apartment.
I gingerly
used the toilet and went to bed—and put my slippers at bedside for when I’d
have to get up in the middle of the night.
Cockroach
memories to come...
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This year there is another essay a week
challenge, 52EssaysNextWave. If you’d like to try it, go to the Facebook page
for 52EssaysNextWave and sign up. Or just read some of the essays that will be
linked to there.
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