The Night Of The Living Cockroach

This is a classic post from my old blog at blogger. I thought it would be good to post a little bit of my creative juices for all of you my faithful readers (which is probably 2 people) to see. Without further ado, I proudly present to you a Woodstock Masterpiece, “The Night of the Living Cockroach.”

Well, I thought that over the Thanksgiving holiday I would spend some time with my younger siblings and cousin in the time honored tradition known as “movie watching.” Now, you know that no one really ever “watches” a movie when there is a group. Inevitably, something comes up that winds up making you forget all about the movie being “watched” and forces you to place all of your attention on that object. The title has already given you a little insight as to who this intruder was on our night of fun.
Another part of that great American tradition of movie viewing is that it is done in the dark. No one knows exactly who first thought of this idea, but he definitely deserves some sort of posthumous award. About 15 minutes into our movie, I noticed something moving near my air mattress on the floor (I always wind up there or on the couch when all the family comes together). I immediately thought, “I’m pretty sure that I picked up all of the twins (they’re 3 years old) toy cars, so what is that.” As my eyes readjusted, in order to focus on something not glowing like a full moon in a telescope, I came to the conclusion that this was not a toy but rather one of the most infamous of all household intruders. No, I’m not talking about a reality TV host, which would be disturbing. It was indeed THE COCKROACH – you may be wondering at the caps, yeah, it was so big it deserved caps.

I quietly left the room and got my favorite anti-cockroach weapon of choice, toilet paper. Seriously. I don’t know why but I always try to catch them and squeeze until I hear the pop. I guess that just brings satisfaction in knowing that he is no longer with us on this earth. Anyway, so I returned to the room to find my foe not where I had left him. As the elder statesman of the crew, it was of utmost importance that I not panic. So I did the next best thing and let everyone know, in a calm, cool and collected tone, that there was a cockroach in the room.
Mass chaos would ensue because two of the four people in the room were females. As I was trying to trap him on the Hot Wheel Mountain of Doom (all ramps went flying off into oblivion) he did the most remarkable thing. I will swear to the day that I die that he turned around, looked at me, and then jumped off the top. Not a problem, right? Wrong. Remember those lights. Yep, they were still off. “Oh well!” I thought, “Maybe no one will notice.” Then my sister asked if I caught it. After much fumbling around for an answer I decided to go prematurely deaf and just sat down to continue “watching” the movie.
A short while later, my cousin nearly jumped into the house across the street all the while wailing “It jumped on me!It jumped on me!It jumped on me!” I reached for the lights and thought I had my chance to smother him. I forgot that my own eyes had to adjust. With this 2/100 of a second advantage the little guy crawled to temporary freedom underneath a cabinet.
It was at this point that I was tired of playing games. I went to the kitchen for the killing agent that ushers bugs into insect eternity faster than Kobayashi can pack away 53 wieners at Nathan’s annual contest. With a little spraying around the edges, he came whimpering to his death out in the middle of the floor. I wrapped him up and sent him off to sea, well more like the local sewage. Finally, the reign of terror was over. Now on to the movie at hand.
My mother walked out of their guestroom, which was 15 feet away from all the action and told us all to go to bed because she needed sleep – she was going day-after-thanksgiving shopping at 4:00 AM, just 3 1/2 hours from the present time. We never even got halfway throughout the show. But at least it was quality family time.