Man of the House

Earlier this week, my usually morning sluggishness and lethargic attitude about getting ready for work was hindered even more than usual. I stumbled my half-asleep downstairs, squinting from the sudden sunlight and not having my glasses on yet. Flipped on CNN, and then noticed an unexpected houseguest scurry by: cockroach #3 in my apartment.

Now, I have tolerance for a lot of things in my place: clothes all over the place, unwashed dishes, hair and dust showing themselves obviously on the tile flooring, water rings on the table, even minor tiny ants in the kitchen. But cockroaches? No. Nuh-uh. Noooooo. And especially not the big fat juicy kinds in Taiwan. No, thank you.

I'm sorry, but I just don't like scary bugs.

But, I'm a brave grown man, so instead of screaming and running back upstairs into the safety of my bed and calling in sick, I composed myself. I watched him crawl around, under the table, across the living room, all without much notice of me. Bastard bug, at least show me some respect -- be a bit worried, ran away faster, act scared, or something -- I'm the man of the house, after all! Nothing. He didn't care, and that was unacceptable.

I armed myself with my laundry hook-pole-thing. (I'm so brave, I didn't even put oven mitts on first ... but mainly because I didn't have any.) Prodded in his general direction with the pole, and he made a dash for it to hide around the Christmas tinsel. I shook him out of there -- Christmas spirit would not save this one -- and he ran across to the stools. I knocked him around a bit, just for sport -- because hey, who doesn't like to mess around with them a while before killing them, really? He tried to climb up the side of the stool, which I banged with the pole.

And then, the most curious thing happened.

He fell. He fell the whole two inches onto the tile. On his back, legs pointed up, doing 6-pedal bicycle pedalling in the air like crazy. He couldn't flip himself over. Yeah, that's what I mean. He'd fallen, and couldn't get up. He just lay there, as if hoping his legs would eventually catch onto something that would give him the leverage to flip over again.

"Ha! Can't get up? Not so tough now, are you, you damned bug? Are you?? Damned cockroach!"

I took this chance to grab my other tools for the closing: my GAP slippers, and a paper bag. I attached the right slipper to the pole, fashioning a long leg wearing a slipper. With incredible force for so early in the morning, I brought the Great Blue (right) Slipper with Orange Stripes upon him. And to be extra sure, I threw down the left one on top of it.

The death blow: my double-slipper whammy.

With an aire of triumphant glory, I collected him onto the paper bag, dumped him into the toilet. I had re-asserted control over my domain, and headed out to conquer the fun that work had in store.

Man of the house. That's me.