My Unreasonable Fear- Roaches

Among the items on my mental list of things I’m unreasonably afraid of is a relatively innocuous, albeit disgusting, creature- the roach. But living in Florida means it is a fear I am forced to face all too often.

Last night while letting my dogs out to take care of business in the back yard, I noticed a roach crawling around on the back porch.

“Don’t freak out,” I told myself. “It will go away.”

Did you know that roaches can sense fear? It’s true, and they take on nerves of steel once they sense it. That roach started running right for me. I ran forward a few steps to avoid it. It changed course. I panicked. The moves I commenced to performing to avoid that nasty little creature made me look like a champion break-dancer. I think I even threw in a few Rockettes-style high kicks for good measure.

“Fly-swatter!” I exclaimed to myself. The husband just recently put a fly-swatter on the porch to use when we’re sitting out there.

Did you know that if you don’t completely annihilate a roach, chances are, it will simply suck up its guts and crawl away, living to frighten you another day? Listen to the voice of experience here, dear readers. I’ve witnessed it. I speak only the truth.

So when I take a fly-swatter to a roach, it goes a little something like this:

whack…whack…WHACK!…WHACKWHACKWHACKWHACKWHACK!!!!!

Legs must be become detached. Wings must disappear. Guts clearly have to be squished badly enough that they can’t be reassembled at a later date.

I’m not sure when I developed a fear of roaches. I can tell you this, though: my younger brother certainly helped cultivate it.

See this old picture of me? Notice the arms on the chair I’m sitting in. This is the chair I used to sit in to do my homework. I never realized that when scooted closely to the table, the chair arms could lock me in like Fort Knox.

This is the chair I was sitting in the day my little brother came at me with a dead roach-filled Kleenex and threw it on me. It’s a wonder I didn’t crack my skull as I tried to reel away from it.

From that day forward, it was game-on for my brother. He could come at me with an empty Kleenex and send me into a hissy fit.

And then the fear went crazy. Suddenly it wasn’t just roaches that scared me. It was anything that might be perceived as a roach. Like a brown oak leaf on the carpet. Or a hair ball tossed near the trash can that didn’t make it inside the trash can. Or the tracks that those darn Jehovah’s Witnesses shove in my screen door when I don’t answer their knock.

Essentially, anything that cannot be correctly identified from the corner of my eye the second I see it is categorized as a roach first, respond to adequately with a complete freak-out, followed by calm relief should I realize it was not, in fact, a roach.

Ahhhh, the joys of being a scaredy cat…