The C-Word

No, not THAT word. I am not a big fan of the “C U Next Tuesday" word. Probably because it has been used directly at me a few times. There are some great insults that have been hurled at me. Some great one-word-zingers that get their point across; but that word, nah, don’t like it.

And I don’t mean “Commitment”, either. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I have nothing against love, per say, it’s just the idea of a monogamous relationship (right now)and giving up my bed space permanently I am against. Plus, the idea that someone would see me first thing in the morning, with morning gas and eye liner half way down my puffy-sleep-deprived-eyes…yuck. The concept of my partner being exposed to my premenstrual self whom I usually hide away in the magic attic until I no longer scare my children. Yep, not right now, but thanks. I’m sure there will be someone someday who will enjoy these sexy traits of mine, but I am not looking to find out any time soon, so I think we’re good. Of course, I am also not really in the mood for their morning gas, puffy faces or testosterone-poisoned selves on a full time basis either. Small males are enough right now.

No, the C-word I am referring to is the dreaded “Cockroach” (and before you get grossed out, I do NOT have roaches in my apartment. If I did, you wouldn’t be able to walk passed my apartment without hearing screams of terror. Plus, if they were here, I would have moved out by now). The C-thingies (shudder) and I have had a tumultuous and tormented past. Well, they may not mind me, but I mind them. Like, a lot. Like, really a lot. Like, yuck and a half a lot. (shudder)

Back in college, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (go Badgers) I had moved into a basement apartment (because I wanted to be just like Laverne and Shirley) on, oh what was the name of that street. It was right down the street from The Union. Umm…I’ll get back to you on that. Anyway, the night I moved in, the C-thingies came from everywhere. There I was, in cowboy books, boxer shorts and a ripped t-shirt (ala Madonna) with a can of raid in one hand and a shoe in the other. I felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger before he was governor and still just a bad overpaid actor. Commando Allison! "AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!" (wait, that may have sounded more like a pirate.) Anyway, I killed so many C-thingies I lost count. I finally thought I was done and took off my boots and one crawled over my foot. I ran screaming from my new disgusting apartment at 2am to my friend Rachel’s apartment. She wasn’t thrilled I was waking her up at 2am, but she calmed me down, gave me vodka and let me crash there. The landlords actually moved rather quickly and they cleaned up all of the corpses, bombed my place and I don’t know if it was the freezing winter temperatures or they were actually gone, but they were, actually gone. (shudder)

Landon Street! Oh good, I remembered. I feel better now. Okay, to continue on with my innane bug story...


Flash forward ten years, when I found the cutest one bedroom in Larchmont Village with French doors and built in furniture from the 1920’s. I loved this place. It was so cute and sweet with the original icebox still in the kitchen. Yep, I loved it until they turned the electricity on. Then “they” came from everywhere…again. Return of the C-thingies.

Hundreds. (shudder) I didn’t even try to kill them. I was frozen with fear this time. I could barely move to across the living room to call in back up. It took what seemed to be an hour (like five minutes)to make it all the way to the bedroom and called my BFF Kelly, who drove all the way from Van Nuys and killed them from me. I love her. She understands me. She is also terrified of spiders. I kill hers and she kills mine.

I left my cute and infested pad and moved out that night. The nice thing was I hadn’t unpacked yet so it made moving super easy to move again, one day after I had just moved in. By the way, this is the short version of the story of what became known as “The Pit of Despair”. (shudder)

In the last apartment I lived in with the dreaded X, we had the issue of waterbugs. These are the great white sharks of C-thingies. They look identical to their smaller cousin bugs but live outside and only come in to your house to die. I know all of this information because I had the exterminator on speed dial by then. Richie, the exterminator, who took my calls and inspected my apartment and understood my fears. He was so nice. He was afraid of flying and had only been on an airplane once in his life. He was actually much nicer than my x-husband was to me about my Entomophobia. Although the dreaded X made fun of my jumping onto furniture or running screaming from the room and hiding until it was gone when one of these waterbugs came to visit, he did kill them for me. They would crawl on the walls and ceilings which was the grossest part of these things. (shudder)

When I left him, my first apartment was clean and shiny and bright and apparently had a big hole in the screen of one of the doors because the waterbugs came to roost again. They showed up two weeks after I had moved in. Try to understand this: I had paralyzing Entomophobic fears that made me scream like Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween and I had just left my Bug-killer and was planning on divorcing him. Although I hated him, the man still killed my bugs. This put me into a whole new area of my fear. Overcoming my fear.

I was in Grad school for my Masters in Education at the time, so I had these huge text books I liked to use to kill these monsters. My favorite book to use was my Bilingual Education book which was larger than my youngest son at the time. I loved this book. Not just because I liked what Cummings and Krashen had to say about education but I would hurl the book and smash’em. Ummm, not the pedagogic researchers, I meant the bugs.

But then the problem was my fear would kick in again and I couldn’t pick up the dead ones. (shudder) I would try but…I…just…eeewwww….couldn’t. My babysitter apparently came from hearty-stock in El Salvador, so would come over in the mornings and pick up the bug corpses for me. She never made fun of me, she never rolled her eyes at me; she just acted as my waterbug coroner for me without a fuss because she understood my fears. She has a fear of heights so I clean the cobwebs off of the ceiling. We make a good team. I love her. She does my laundry too.

Now a days, we have only had to deal with spiders and crickets, which I can handle peacefully and rarely even kill them. I like the catch and release program for bugs I don’t mind.

So, here's the point of my blog today (you were wondering, I know). I did find the strength I needed within myself to kill these monsters all by myself because I had no choice. Sometimes the only way to face your fears and get over them is to be forced to face your fears. Yep, those little buggers made me woman-up and kick some ass. Like most things in life we are afraid of, we usually remain afraid of them until we have no other alternative but to face them. Whether it is big nasty bugs, leaving your spouse and being on your own, graduating from high school and moving into adulthood or just learning to drive on the freeway in Los Angeles; you do what you have to do when you have to do it.

Of course I am still afraid of the C-thingies. I can kill them if I am forced to, but I still really, really, really don't like them. One crawled into my classroom the other day. (Ah, working in an inner-city school. Good times.) I screamed, jumped on a desk and offered five points extra credit for one of my students to kill it. It was a beautiful moment in education.

(shudder)