The Moment I Became a Man

People measure relationship compatibility through different requirements: the same religion, values, aspirations, blah blah. But here’s a true game changer: DOES YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER KILL BUGS?

I know, I know—how is this an important consideration, you ask? Well, let me tell you.

**I am warning you ahead of time of the profane language in my reenactment below. To maintain a sense of realism, I have decided to keep the f-bombs.**

Last night Harry and I were knackered and prepping for bed at about 10 p.m. I had just brushed my teeth and noticed my fat cat Twinkie pawing something under our dresser.

“She’s so cute,” I coo, watching her head cock to the side as her tail whipped around. Then it occurred to me—what was she playing WITH under that dresser?

Then, as if on cue, it emerged from the shadows. This was the moment in a horror movie where trembling violins screech out an alarming note.

I gasped. Goosebumps burst from my skin.

From under my dresser slithered the biggest, fattest, creepy-crawliest cockroach I’d ever seen.

It was a billion times bigger and hairier than this. And it HISSED.

“HOLY SHIT,” I screamed. “OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT.”

Harry’s head darted to me. “What??” But he couldn’t miss it for long. Out of the corner of his eye was that…thing.

“HOLY FUCK! OH MY GOD!”

“What do I do? What do I do??” I shouted. This would become my mantra for the night. See, the roach was too big to squish. Guts would fly everywhere. We would feel its steely limbs under our shoe with how big and mighty it was.

First things first: I grabbed my hobbit slippers. My feet were bare and vulnerable. The last thing I wanted was to feel the roach crawl over my naked foot.

Then Harry and I bolted the hell out of that room.

The world was fucking ending. We paced in circles; I kept slapping my arm and my ankle. Ghost cockroaches were covering me. My skin was CRAWLING.

“What do we do? Like what the fuck do I actually do?” I repeated.

“I don’t know!” Harry yelled.

“We have to kill it!” (Duh.)

“Yeah, but how??”

 “I don’t know! You go figure it out.” I wanted to stick to the stereotypes and cower in a corner, pointing at the beast, while my hero killed it.

Harry sliced the air with his arms. “No way, nuh-uh! I’m not going back in there!”

“Well I’M not killing it! You’re shittin’ yourself if you think I’m going back in there.”

“We can’t stay here tonight!”
“Well where will we go?”

“I don’t know—a hotel?”

“Let’s kill it with fire!” (The easier option would’ve been to just burn down the whole house, in my opinion.)

Naturally, this went on for a good while. Then I decided to get serious. I plugged in my computer and took this to Facebook. I released all my inner anguish at having my home invaded by God’s worst creation.

While the status was cathartic, no one gave me any good advice. Just a few weak lol’s.

So I weighed my options. The only worse thing than having a cockroach in our home was having it proliferate in our home—in which case, burning the whole house down would indeed be the best solution. And how unfair was that? This was a foe that could survive the nuclear apocalypse. I didn’t stand a chance against that!

“All right, so you go in there, you kill it, and I’ll back you up for emotional support,” I proposed to Harry, who was still shuddering and biting his nails.

“No way. I’m not killing it. YOU kill it and I’ll be your emotional support.”

You know your husband is a weenie when you have to agree to kill the bug from Hades itself.

“Fine.” Lawd help us; our lives were in my hands.

I shook off my desire to numb my pain with vodka shots and picked up my weapon of choice: a vacuum cleaner. I turned off my brain and wondered what awaited me in the room of horrors.

With a shaky inhale, I tiptoed in the room. And almost immediately, I heard it. That’s right, I could HEAR the sound of its slimy legs scuttling on the ground. I die again just thinking about it.

“Turn on the vacuum! I found it!”

The vacuum roared. I charged in, brandishing my weapon and yodeling a battle cry at the top of my lungs.

“DIEEEEEEEEEEE!”

I sucked it up in a second. The deed was done.

The vacuum handle fell with a clatter. Even though the bug was gone, our lifetime trauma had only just begun. We stood around reflecting on what transpired when we heard the familiar scuttling sound...coming from the tube of the vacuum handle.

The bastard was trying to escape!

“TURN THE VACUUM BACK ON!”

He fell backwards, I imagine, and whirled round and round in the belly of the vacuum. After a good few minutes, we flipped it off.

I doubted the cockroach was still alive. “His kind is gonna outlive planet earth,” as I reminded Harry.

My hubs was quiet—a man changed. His eyes were empty, and that’s when I realized he was incapable of making a decision. When I recognized this, I knew what we had to do.

“Outside. This vacuum is going outside.”

With that, we tossed the vacuum on our patio. It was supposed to rain, but at least we wouldn’t share the same habitation with the cockroach. It was finished. Glory hallelujah.

I don’t know how I did it, but some minutes later I began to decompress. It was probably some stray cockroach. I didn’t have the energy to ponder the possibilities of a whole cockroach family crouching in our house. Harry, on the other hand? He was still tense and giving himself a hug in a corner.

“Let’s go to bed, Harry.”

“No. There could be cockroaches in there.”

“Well what do you want to do, stand guard all night?”

“No.”

“Come to bed,” I insisted. To prove the world was a safe place to be again, I did a cockroach inspection in our bed sheets. All clear.

“Come on.” I patted the mattress.

He finally conceded, but only if we could spoon.

Guys, this is my 28-year-old husband. I am the world’s biggest wimp, but I felt like Indiana Jones as I consoled him into the night. 

So there you have it. Marry someone who can kill bugs so you don’t have to. When you have two people with a phobia of cockroaches in one house, nothing is going to happen—and you’re going to destroy your vacuum cleaner.