Job Conditions, Pt. 1

I hate roaches, especially NOLA roaches. They're big and they fly and if you smoosh them, they crunch. (Tell me, what is the evolutionary benefit of putting wings on these things?) On "Fear Factor," they had a stunt where contestants had to lie in a clear box for a minute while hissing cockroaches swarmed their bodies. And let me say this, no way. Not for $1 million. Not for $2 million. I just couldn't do it. No other non-stinging insect has such an effect on me. (But I am a hater of the stingers, too. I once spent four hours at the gym. Not because of any love of fitness, but because I had woken up at my parents' house to find dozens of wasps flying in the air above me. They had built a nest into the wall of the house and into my room. Instead of dealing with the wasps, I screamed repeatedly, grabbed a gym bag, and took aerobic class after aerobic class to avoid going home again.) (Maybe someone needs to unleash some wasps in my bedroom now. Or maybe they can be trained to swarm around my fridge.)

Let me tell you my most terrifying personal roach experience: It was 1998. My notably unreliable boyfriend at the time had failed to fully close a box of -- I think it was pasta or cereal -- before he put it in the cabinet. I came home from work and was on the phone with my friend Sue. I decided to take out said box and pour it into a bowl or pot or whatever it was. I can't remember, because all I can remember were the roaches that came tumbling out of the box. I threw the box on the ground, screaming for all I'm worth, then I grabbed the can of Raid and sprayed, sprayed, sprayed at each and every roach as it scurried out of that box. There were complete roach families in there. They kept coming, I kept spraying and screaming. I sprayed until the can was empty and I screamed myself hoarse. I sprayed so much that I couldn't stay in the house. I screamed so much that I was surprised my neighbor didn't call the police. (I asked him if he'd heard me and he said no. That didn't make me feel safe.) (Sue, by the way, escaped unharmed save for ear pain and some emotional scars.)

To this day, my first reaction is to put everything that's opened - cereal, baking products, chips, bread, etc - into the fridge. My sister mocks me for this. We'll see who is laughing when she is attacked.

But I knew, coming here, that I would have to face my roach fear. Before I arrived, one friend told me a gutting story that went like this, "Blah blah blah, blab blab blab, and then I pulled down the ceiling tile and DOZENS of roaches fell on top of me. Blah blah blah." He could have added, "And one of the roaches had the face of my wife and it opened its mouth and told me to pick up milk on the way home," and I wouldn't have heard it. I was lost in the horror of that moment, being showered in roaches.What if one of them got in my pocket, liked it, decided to make it his home? (True story: Friend of mine goes and buys a few pounds of crawfish. His wife, a great hater of seafood like myself, kindly allows him to bring it into their home ... where the paper bag promptly breaks, sending cooked crawfish all over the room. OK, that's gross enough. Now fast forward a few weeks. My crawfish-loving friend is at work. He reaches into his jacket pocket, at random, and what does he find? A shriveled up crawfish. "It didn't even smell that badly," he said.)

There are days when I'll kill more than a dozen cockroaches. I've forced myself to get above my crunching horror and just kill them: With my feet, a crowbar, a hammer, whatever is handy at the time. Infant in arms at time of cockroach onslaught? Doesn't matter. The roaches must die. One recent day, for example, I was so proud of myself because I didn't flinch -much - when we were pulling down sheetrock and I kept uncovering hoardes of roaches that would then scurry off and hide before I could slay them. It made me nervous, knowing they were in there, watching, but I kept going.

So roaches are one less-than-ideal aspect of what I do. Another? The smells. I'll get into that on another post