This whole post should be in italics and with exclamation points

Back at the blue house in college, we had, to be honest, a cockroach infestation. As anybody who knows me is aware, I don't do cockroaches. Can't. Stand. Cockroaches. Everything about them makes me shriek like a little girl. Their disgusting little bodies, the way they get on tiptoes and scurry quickly across the floor (or wall or ceiling or cupboards), their omnipresence. Icky icky icky! Can't... uncurl... my... toes.

So we had a cockroach problem. And it wasn't just the regular Arizona cockroach problems that most dwellers inevitably deal with at one point or another- there were also sewer cockroaches. For those of you unfamiliar with these mutants, let me briefly describe them to you- they are fat, long, and bold- they will survive the apocalypse. The thing is they are difficult to kill. Think flush-down-the-toilet-and-climb-back-up difficult. Several-whacks-with-the-hammer difficult. Crawl-up-your-leg-in-the-shower bold (you would have heard me scream from the Midwest if I had been the one to experience that. I did learn to shower with my eyes open the entire time though). To sum up, sewer cockroaches are monstrous, disgusting, and horrifying.

So the blue house. One summer both Gina and Erin were my roommates. Erin and I were both terrified of the cockroaches. Gina was the only one who would go near them- she is my hero. So without her presence as a bodyguard, we were reduced to throwing bowls over them until she got home. Let me also explain that some roaches required books on top of the bowls. Knowing a freak of nature was moving that bowl down the hallway brings terror to a whole new level. I laugh now at the memory of the hallway and kitchen littered with bowls and books, but it wasn't nearly so funny at the time...

Occasionally Gina would kill them (after flushing proved inadequate on one early morning bathroom visit), but more often than not the kind-hearted soul would just toss them out into the yard. I was in no position to demand killings as I wouldn't even go near them, so we had to settle for that.

The kitchen. I assume I need not explain why they eventually migrated there. I will say, though, that a cupboard long bore the mark of Sarah's flip flop thrown from across the living room one summer evening. Not bad aim, that one, but alas a futile effort. I consequently stopped using the cupboard as much as possible. In fact, I only went into the kitchen when I absolutely had to.

My bedroom was across from the bathroom, so I understandably had nightmares about the roaches crossing the hallway into my room. Miraculously that never happened. The knots in the wood flooring, however, would scare the bejesus out of me without fail. Even after memorizing the locations of particularly suspicious looking knots, I never went into the hallway without the light blazing. I think I lost two years of my life from the constant stress of it all.

That, my friends, is why I have an absolute meltdown around cockroaches.  I just can't cope.

And to think there are flying cockroaches.