Roachmobile

By the way, I had a really disturbing drive home tonight.

Remember, I live in the South, where cockroaches are a fact of live. You can have the nicest, cleanest house on the block and still have roaches here. In the South, any apartment complex worth its salt includes monthly bug spray/extermination as part of your rent. In the South, you don't go out on your patio at night without shoes on. Makes the South sound so appealing, doesn't it?

Anyway, tonight, I was leaving work around midnight or so. I put my key in my car door, open up, and see something move inside my car. Roach. My hair stood up on the back of my neck.

It scrambled into a crease of vinyl next to my gear shift. I hunted for a pen, stuck it in the crease, and wiggled it around in hopes that the offending insect would crawl out and I could squish it with something. Or at least fling it out my car door. No roach to be found.

Here's the dilemma. I could spend the next half hour digging around under the seats of my car, looking in every cubbyhole in my vehicle, trying to find the roach. Or I could just acknowledge that I'll never find it, suck it up, and drive home.

I opt for the latter. It's probably hiding in a little crevasse under the seat or in the floorboard carpeting, and if I'm lucky, I'll inadvertantly squish it.

I close the door, put the key in the ignition, and shift into reverse. The very moment that I move the shift lever, the roach jumps out, scurries across the console, and scrambles under the passenger seat. I squealed. Yuck, yuck, yuck!!!

The rest of the drive home, I left the dome light on, so that if the little bastard chose to reveal itself, it wouldn't catch me by surprise. I drove home very fast.