My Greatest Fear

These days, when so many people are fearful of the things happening in our world, what with the economic crisis and all, I thought it appropriate to discuss my all time greatest fear.  Cockroaches.  I shudder at the thought.  I cringe at the thought.  My eyes well up with tears at the thought of these creatures.  No one likes them.  They annoy/scare/irritate just about everyone I know.  But I am phobic about them.  When/if I actually encounter one, my life is at its worst moment.  And I am always fearful that today is the day that I may see one again.

I have, luckily, only had a few incidences with them (roaches) over the past three years.  Orange County, Orange County is the place where I had to come to deal with the worst pest of all.  Back when I had two waitressing jobs, I worked a lot of double shifts and inevitably I was cranky all the time and usually in need of a bottle of wine to wind down when I got home.  That night Shaun was working and I was home alone at my old place.  I turned on Sideways, perfect movie to drink a bottle of Coppola Claret to, opened my wine, poured a little into my glass, set the bottle on the table beside me, leaned back on my couch and started the movie.  I sipped the wine.  Only about ten minutes into the film I noticed something black on my paneled living room wall.  It crawled higher up the vaulted wall.  I froze.  "Is that?"  I asked myself privately, "Is that a roach."  It was HUGE.  I think there was a shadow, but it was 2 1/2 inches long at least.  "Ok, " I reasoned with myself, "OK.  If you can see this thing, you are OK.  As long as you know where it is.  It's just sitting up on the wall.  No big deal."  I drank a little more Claret.  My heart started pounding.  I couldn't focus on the movie whatsoever.  I started sweating, scared, my heart was beating loudly.  "You can ignore it."  All of a sudden it jumped/flew across from the wall to the ceiling.  I SCREAMED.  I put my wine down.  I grabbed the phone, ran into the bedroom, and shoved a towel in the crack under the door.  I paced, tears streaming down my face.  "Goddamnit!  Why? Why? Why tonight!"  All I wanted was to relax and get drunk.  A quiet night alone.  I called Erinn.  She's good with bugs, she'll know what to do.  No answer.  I called my sister.  I was sobbing, she was worried, until she heard my predicament.  But she laughed and listened anyway.  "And the worst thing Samantha, is that my wine is out there and I really need a drink!"  I dared to open the door, run out, and grab the glass and bottle.  I went back in my room, talked to my sister and got drunk, scared shitless.  My biggest fear was born.

Over the next couple of years they crawled over a few times.  Luckily Shaun was there to collect them, kill them, or at least take them outside somewhere.  Always, whenever one appeared, they would crawl in under the crack in the door, I would panic, scream, cry and hide in my room until they were gone.

I bought some Raid, especially for roaches.  Clove scented.  But there isn't much that can actually mask the stench of bug spray.  And my second biggest fear is dying of poisoning from caustic household substances.   As if I could actually get to the Raid, grab the can, hold it and point at a moving target, all while shaking and crying.  But the Raid made me feel safe and when I was alone at night I would have it near me.  Just in case.

They are terrifying to behold.  Black, antennae everywhere, WINGS.  Their size compared to other household insects is incredible.  But their erratic behavior gets me the most.  They can move quickly.  

Shaun had seen a few here at our new place in Orange.  Over the years since my first encounter my phobia has grown into an ever present, all-consuming fervent thought.  Sometimes I can think about other things, usually not.  He would allude to one that he killed, in that special way he has, which is to tell me not to worry, but that scares me more.  "What!!!  One was here, where?  Did you catch it???!!!!"  And Shaun, whose annoyance with my phobia has grown along with my terror, will say: "Yes.  It's fine.  Don't think about it."

One night, in May, I was busy working on a scrapbook in my kitchen, for hours, quietly.  I went to throw some trash away, under the sink, and I noticed a roach.  I tore out of the kitchen.  My heart pounding.  What to do?  I HAD to finish that scrapbook that night, I was running out of time before my grandma's birthday party, I was to give it to her then.  Where was the Raid?  In the cupboard that the roach was crawling all over.  They are so bold as to crawl right on the spray meant to kill them.  Not that I could ever even use it.  I thought briefly about calling Maggiano's and telling them that it was an emergency and that Shaun was needed at home right away.  I couldn't actually do it though, Shaun would be mad.  I was crying, freaked out, in terror, so I called Raylene.  She may be home, she just lives down the street.  I left her a message telling her that it was an emergency.  I called Erinn.  She answered.  I know that she's all the way in Wisconsin, but as she is somewhat of a bug expert, I told her the situation, tears streaming down my face, choking back sobs.  Just her sensible voice calmed me.

"What do I do?" I said.

"They respond to noise, vibrations in the floor."

"So, when I screamed at the top of my lungs, do you think it heard me?"

"Yes, and I'm sure it was more scared of you than you are of it."

"I don't think that's possible," I sobbed.

How is that supposed to reassure me? I've never been so terrified of anything in my entire life.

To know that the roach is scared too, well, that does nothing for me.  I realize that the both of us are operating on adrenaline when we come in contact with one another, no good.  He's scared, I'm scared, nothing rational is going on, it's chaos.

I had to go, because Raylene was calling, and I had told her it was an emergency.  She came right from work.  By then the roach had gone.  Raylene looked for it, to kill it with the Raid, but it had escaped.  She stayed with me and we talked all night until Shaun came home.

Shaun had a suggestion for me "Why don't you read a book about roaches.  You used to be afraid of spiders until you read a book about them.  You used to be afraid of Mormons until you read a book about them."  My response: "If I had a book about Roaches in here, I would never get any sleep.  I would look at the pictures and stay up all night with anxiety."

They crawl in my medicine cabinet.  I suspected they were in there.  But Shaun found one in there yesterday in the daytime.  That's just great.  Where can I go?  I am never safe.  Before, they were nighttime creatures.  I would encounter them at night.  But now, with this daytime run-in, how can I be sure that I won't see one in the day: my safe haven?

At night they haunt me.  In the day they nag me.  I've only seen 9, maybe, over the past three years.  But it doesn't matter if I never see another one.  There's nothing that I can do.  So I sit here, this evening, feeling the light change outside.  The sun is going down (not that it matters what time of day it is apparently) and I begin to feel the fear.  Can of Raid by my side, that I'll hopefully not need, but it's here to protect me, until Shaun gets home, from my greatest fear: the cockroach.

Trash

Ever since I can remember, there has been trash on the side of the road.  On the side of freeways.  "Litter" is another name for it.  No one is supposed to litter, but millions of people do, and when I was young I would sit in the back of my parents mini-van, on our way to LA on the 91 or some other freeway, and look out the window.  On the banks beside the freeway there was usually some landscaping, maybe some sprinklers sprinkling reclaimed water. And peppered throughout the oleander and the iceplant was litter.  As a child it seemed natural to me.  And over the years it has become a symbol of Southern California.  I myself have never littered, I swear.  But the litter spread around the out-of-doors seems right to me.  Good even.

As a girl scout we would have to pick up trash after a camping trip or an all day event.  It was always a nuisance to do that.  But I took it to heart that: one should not leave thy trash strewn around.  My mother instilled the idea in my head that people who threw trash outside their car windows were, "Low-life scum.  Losers.  Idiots."  They didn't care about the planet, anything or anybody.  Why did people just toss a cup out of the window?  Because they were driving through Lake Elsinore?  Because they think Ontario is ugly anyway, what's another bag of old hamburgers?  With our church we would have whole Saturdays where we went to public places and picked up trash for community service hours.  It was brutal.  We would each fill up a couple of trash bags full of wrappers, soda cans, soda bottles, chip bags.  Those were the days we dreaded. But like with girl scouts, I took my job seriously, and I felt pride in cleaning up. Cleaning is very satisfying.  

When I moved to Washington state for a few years, right away when I drove in I noticed that there was very little, if any, trash on the side of the road.  It was beautiful!  That state is amazingly clean.  Of course, it rains all the time, so the trash is probably washed into the storm drains or something.  But actually, Washingtonians care about their surroundings.  We walked around Bellevue, a city where I lived, a lot, and there wasn't any trash on the side of the road. Everything was spic and span.  And there was actual foliage everywhere, not just dirt with a few oleander and iceplant watered with reclaimed water.  And in between the trees were small ferns and moss. No fast food refuse.

Every time I would return home for a visit, I would thrill at the smog, open skies, trashy strip malls.  Sigh.  How I've missed California, I would think.  When I would fly out of LAX, I would tear up at the decaying fast food bags, crumpled up next to Marlborough Light boxes and Coke cans next to the freeway off-ramp.  Goodbye for now.  I'll see you when I get back.  

I did come back, and re-assimilated myself to the garbage culture.  And it wasn't until my visit to Madison, WI, that I remembered how a place could actually be clean.  I walked all over that town and saw two pieces of trash total!  What a clean place!  People care!  They listened to their mothers here!  Amazing!  It is a really great place, I was completely smitten with it after my brief visit.  What a clean place.

But when I got off the plane at LAX and stepped out of the airport, I smelled the thick smoggy air, saw some litter on the side of the freeway and rejoiced!  I am home at last.  For no matter how much I can admire such clean, pristine places where people have pride in their environment, I am, at heart, a Southern California native.  And I have pride in, yes, the strip malls, the freeways, the traffic, and the trash.  I don't condone littering, but it's a fact of our lives, and somehow, it's a part of me.  I couldn't live anywhere else.  Just me, Shaun and the highway litter.  We'll drive off, into the gorgeous sunset, on the freeway, and speed by the trash on the side of the road.