The (Ex)Terminator

One night, many years ago, I was up late fiddling on my computer (as was the tradition in those days) when I discovered an intruder in my room. A roach, to be more precise. Now, if you've spent more than two hours with me you should know that I am terrified of bugs. It's one of those intrinsic qualities - I have blonde hair, blue eyes, and an irrational fear of creepy crawlies. Once, when I was still living in a dorm, I was getting ready to take a shower and I saw a roach on the floor. I had to dance around it to put my clothes back on and get Lindsay to kill it before I could get back to business. But I digress...

The roach in my room that night was on the wall. He was amber brown and about the size of the first 1/3 of my pinky finger. My cat saw him too and was so intrigued that she waddled from the bed onto the desk to get a closer look. If there's one thing that I hate more than bugs it's smashing bugs. The crunching and the gut-oozing makes me queasy so I usually Raid them to death instead. The trouble in this case was that we don't keep Raid upstairs, so I ran to my brother's bathroom and grabbed the first cleaning product that I could find (because as far as I was concerned, poison was poison). I took aim, fired the mildew remover and hit my target. Unfortunately, the shot was not fatal and the bug started running wildly around my room. To make a long story short (because I'm sure I've told it before): my cat and I stalked that roach for about an hour and a half until we lost him somewhere behind my bed. I was so afraid that he'd crawl into my mouth while I was sleeping that I gathered my blanket, pillow, and fat cat and slept in my brother's room.

This morning I was cleaning out a bag of nail polish that I used to keep by my bed and I found the decomposed body of that roach at the bottom. I win.