La Cucaracha

Well, it's Sunday. Not much going here. I'm trying to think of things that happened over the 2 months that I didn't post, and I can't come up with anything. I know my kids have done things that I wish I had written down. I guess I could share with you a story that I believe shaped my hatred of the one bug that I believe has no purpose, whatsoever, except to creep the ever loving hell out of me.

The cockroach. Not those little kitchen things that get in your cabinets. No sir, I am talking about the big brown bastards that I firmly believe mutate in the sewers we have here in the South. They have wings for Christ's sake. As if having them crawling around wasn't bad enough, they have to have wings for those aerial assaults. Like the one I am about to share with you.

I was about 11 or 12 and was in the shower. I was happily washing my hair, minding my own business, when out of the corner of my eye I caught movement. I tried my hardest to convince myself I was imagining things, but I looked harder and there he was, looking down at me from the rod the shower curtain was hanging on. I froze. I felt as if I were in an old western movie, getting ready for a shoot out. I was staring at him, he was staring at me.

Cue: "The Ecstasy of Gold"

My hair was completely bubbled up from shampoo. I didn't want to take my eyes of him for fear of losing him. I stepped back and as gently as possible began rinsing the shampoo out of my hair without closing my eyes. Try THAT sometime. My eyes stung, but I was not taking them off that thing. Then it happened.

It plays over in slow motion in my mind, when in reality I know it took all of a tenth of a second to play out. He dive-bombed me. He leaped off that rod and headed straight for me. I believe my family probably thought I was being murdered in the shower. I screamed and was out of that shower with shampoo dripping down my face and my towel barely wrapped around me.

I have other stories about those horrid creatures. Is that sad? That, I must say, is probably one of the only complaints of my childhood. Maybe when I am out of material again I will share another one. Then again, maybe not. Who wants to hear of a poor girl being traumatized by an insect.

Hey, that sounds like a good B movie.