Kafkaesque

There's a cricket armageddon going down in my office building. They are everywhere, blending into the corporate-patterned carpet just enough so that you're constantly almost stepping on them. In the break room, in the bathroom, in the cubes. My main concern is that one will jump on me (you know how wily insects are) or crawl up my pant leg, whereupon I will absolutely freak.

But there have been worse things. I once had a run-in with cockroach that made me get religion.

About two and half years ago, when I was living in my one-bedroom apartment on S. Lamar, I woke up in the middle of the night with a distinct feeling that something was on my bed. (I had this feeling once before, and clicked on the light to find a cave cricket cozied up on my pillow. I had no idea what it was--I thought it was some unholy union of cricket and roach, and I was torn between wanting to faint, wanting to take a scalding shower and never get out, and capturing this creature for science to discover.)

Anyway, call is sixth sense. I turned on the light to find a giant cockroach perched on the edge of my bed. And yes it's cliche, but that thing was Texas size: four inches if it was a centimeter. Not even being hyperbolic. I knew I had to stop it before it crawled under my covers (no one should ever have to make that contingency), so I batted it with my bare hand (blech!) off the bed. And I lost it: I didn't see where it landed or where it went. I stalked it for 20 minutes, wearing tennis shoes and with my finger poised on the Raid can. But it was gone. For sanity's sake, I told myself it shimmied back out the door, and went back to sleep.

The next morning I opened my medicine cabinet and found it perched on the my toothbrush.

You know those scenes in the movies where a bomb goes off, and for a moment everything is silence and slow motion? It was like that. My toothbrush! Is there anything more sacred or personal than someone's toothbrush? I really can't think of anywhere I would have preferred to find a roach less. It seriously makes me want to throw up in my mouth just thinking about it.

I wish I could tell you how this was resolved, but I think I blocked it from memory to protect my mental health. I'm sure there was weeping and gnashing of teeth and "why, God, why?" and the brushing of teeth with a finger that morning and the immediate purchase of new everything that was in the cabinet.