As I was getting ready for bed tonight, I grabbed a dirty shirt from a small pile of dirty laundry at the bottom of my closet. I usually wash my clothes each night so that the dirty ones don’t pile up and lead to hours of hand washing. It has been a full week so, I’ve let a few items accumulate, mostly socks and underwear that I prefer to wash in hot water while I am more than half awake. When I touched the shirt, I felt some type of non-clothe item brush my hand. I looked and I saw a small flurry of movement, also not clothe-like. The movement was small so I leaned over, inspected and poked the pile with a hanger. To my shock and disgust a virtual multitude of roaches scattered all over my room. I jumped on the bed and let out a series of squeaking sounds (which may have been some kind of primordial roach communication), trying not to scream and wake up the house. After I composed myself a bit, I grabbed the hanger and begin to move each item of dirty clothing one by one, carefully examining for any evidence of remaining roaches.
Now, 90 minutes later, I have emptied the hot water tank by compulsively washing every item of clothing on the closet floor. After spraying enough Raid and mosquito repellant to asphyxiate a roach twice my body weight, I am sitting by the window with the fan on my face trying to muster up the courage to turn the light off and go to sleep.
I am not bug-phobic but, there was something so violating about seeing those little nasties scurrying over my underclothes. The fact that I didn’t kill them all allows me to entertain the paranoia that as soon as I turn off the light they are going to come back with big brother roaches, homey roaches, and fat roaches named Vinny and Sal. Then the mighty roach army will viciously pillage my newly washed clothes, already clean clothes, fabric not yet made into clothes, and worst of all worsts – crawl on me. Ugh! I can’t even think about it. I’m going to put my headlamp on and thoroughly inspect every inch of the sheets.
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