Long GED/Roach story (not THAT roach story, Sadie, this one happened last night)
I didn't give blood on the 27th, when I walked to Wal-Mart and saw that the bloodmobile was there. I wanted too, for Karma's sake, but I didn't want to be woozy for the second half of my test. Which leads me to-
I finished taking the GED yesterday. Last time I posted I said only uneducated people with a loose grasp of how to answer simple problems would fail the GED. I stand by that position, but I might've failed math because of it. I mean, when I looked down at the test, my mind went completely blank, and every mathematical solution I'd studied went right out of my head. It probably all traveled down south to Mexico where it settled into the head of a young spanish boy struggling through an exam of his own. Suddenly, he knew all the right answers. He past with flying colors and will live happily ever after, losing his virginity at the age of sixteen to the same teacher who administered the test. They'll do it in the classic Sunday morning position right on her desk and even though she's _really_ hot she knows Kama Sutra so they can go for like six hours and all just because HE stole MY information! And the flying colors he passed with will circle mockingly outside my window and shit on my car, if I ever get one.
I passed, I passed. I think. I have to wait four to six weeks to find out. When I got to the second part of the test and they took that godforsaken calculator away, everything came back to me and things got a lot easier. Now there were fifty questions and I only need a 51% average to pass, and I'm fairly certain I got more than half of those questions right....yeah, I passed. I hope.
So I own a lot of television-on-DVD. Buffy seasons 1-4, Angel season 1, The Shield, Family Guy, Dark Angel, NYPD Blue etc. etc. etc. But once I got serious about studying I swore to myself I wouldn't watch any of them until _after_ I completed the GED. So yesterday I came home with the knowledge that I have entire seasons of television to relive without any studying to hold me back. I got out Buffy season 4 and watched the first three episodes. Before I could finish the third one my sister Sadie came over and I spent the rest of the day with her. If you're wondering where I'm going with this, I'm about to get to that. When my sister left I spent some time with my parents and then I got back to watching Buffy. By now it was about 11:00 o'clock and I always watch tv in the dark at night unless I'm watching Weekend at Bernie's. I was finishing the first disk, the last episode (Fear, Itself) had faded out and Executive Producer: Joss Whedon was white on black on my television screen.
I started to press scene back because there was a scene with good music about a half-hour through and I wanted to watch that again. But before I could, I noticed the reflection of the tv on my pants had...changed. I was wearing my favorite pair of jeans, which I had put on that morning for good luck on finishing the test. They're really, really baggy JNCO jeans with skeleton hands playing bongos. The legs are so wide around that my feet actually disappear under them. So these were the jeans on which the tv was reflecting in the dark after 11 at night. Only as I watched the reflection curiously, I realized that at a certain point around my knee, the reflection was more defined. The light waves were passing over something they could bounce off of better than jeans. And then whatever it was moved, the reflection changed again. It moved down, into a wide crease the pants had made because of the way I was sitting. It disappeared inside of the crease.
I squealed like a pig and thwapped furiously on the opposite side of the crease. I turned on the bedside lamp I bought at Wal-Mart a month-and-a-half ago and quickly pulled up the crease, like pulling off a band-aid.
It was a roach.
Now, 99% people have fears resulting from childhood trauma. My fear is roaches, and I suppose I'll eventually put why in the memories section, which I'm sure Sadie will love to read. The important thing to realize is that when I saw the roach, I screamed (honestly, this time it was a bit more manly, a lot lower than when I usually scream) and lost all control of air flow to my lungs. The roach was half-dead, that much was obvious. It was flattened and battered from my pummeling, it's guts were coming out of its ass and it was dead still...but I know roaches.
I know roaches.
This thing wasn't dead. Not yet. If it's still on you, not in a napkin in a thousand different pieces in the garbage can with holy water sprinkled over the remains and a protection barrier formed from the blood of JC (Jesus Christ, not John Carpenter) encircling the trashcan, that roach will never die. It will just appear dead so that you toss it away. And then the vengeance stalking will begin.
So I carefully grasped two points of my jeans and started to stand up on one leg while keeping the roach on my pants. This way, it wouldn't leave my sight. If you drop it on the floor, it'll scurry towards the dark, and then the vengeance stalking will begin.
Unfortunately for me, it moved. Not the "oh, I'm dying, I'm going to crawl around pointlessly, gasping my last breaths and then die ten seconds later" move. The "I was just pretending to die and the stuff you beat out of me that's oozing like chip dip onto a plate of Lays is really just a decoy I use to fool my enemies but since your not falling for it, I'll be heading off now" move. In other words, the roach unflattened, got up on all six legs and, with its insides leaving a trail on my pants, began to walk off my leg. I squealed again, not manly-like at all, and then in a knee-jerk reaction my elbow shot out and hit the bedside light. I heard the bulb inside *pop* and it went out.
Last week, I gave the only other light I had in my room, a five-foot lamp with a cover and vanilla base, to my mother because it was taking up too much space in my room and kept knocking over my Todd McFarlane horror movie character action figures stituated on the bookshelf next to it every time I went to sleep and it knew I wasn't looking.
I was in darkness again with the bedroom door seven feet away and the only light was that tiny Executive Producer: Joss Whedon white light on black from the tv. The roach was once again just a strong moving reflection on my big baggy jeans. I had to keep the roach on my leg, get to the door, open it, get the roach off of me and then I could worry about killing it.
So I stood up on one leg and started to hop, holding my other leg out in front of me. I could feel it moving now, and as we moved from the light of the tv the feeling of it crawling down my leg was the only way I had of telling the it was still on me, and that for now I was safe from the vengeance stalking. We got to the door and I reached out, grabbed the knob, twisted and yanked it open-
Just as the roach made a desperate leap onto my THANKYOUGOD!!! sock-covered foot.
(Lyle stops writing and puts some socks on...there)
I squealed AGAIN and shook my foot so fast it became a blur. He fell down onto the floor outside in the hallway, but then doubled back into the darkness of my room. I was doomed unless I acted quickly.
I jumped into the hall, ran out into the kitchen and asked my Dad if I could I have a new bulb. I explained the present situation and, as a fellow roach-hater, I went on about my business with his blessing. I got a new bulb (the last one we had) and quickly ran back into the dark room, replaced the bulb, and turned around.
There he was.
He had found the darkest spot he could have hidden in in such a short amount of time. He had hidden against the back of the door. I walked calmly over, picked up one of my sixty dollar church shoes that Nanny bought me while I was visiting North Carolina back in spring (that's sixty dollars for Each of the two shoes [my Nanny is f*cking crazy]) and I obliterated him. The is still an abscess-like stain on the door.
I picked up the thousand remains in a napkin, through them all in the trash and performed the necessary rituals. Then I took a forty-minute shower.
In the aftermath of such an ordeal, I'm not sure whether I should blame the pants. You could say I picked him up while walking to Wal-Mart yesterday. And because they're so huge, he was able to make himself a home until that night without me ever noticing. Or you could say that they acted as my protector. So thick were they that he could not find his way to my tender flesh. And so big were they that he was forced to crawl up, into the light of the television in order to see where he was going.
I haven't decided yet.
And eerily enough, while my sister was here we had spoken about my first encounter with a killer roach...on that lonesome easter weekend back in ninety-six.
One final note on this; every time I've been attacked by a roach (there have been three battles, last night being the shortest of all), there was a need for change in my life. The roach has, in both previous times, symbolized that change. The first, longest and most arduous roach fight led to the cleaning of my very messy room. It's never been that messy again. The second marked my trip to North Carolina last spring, as well as my eventual destruction of my bunk bed.
And now there is this. Does the roach symbolize that my taking the GED has opened many doors and that now I must choose which one to walk through. Or has my karma taken a serious blow from not giving blood to the bloodmobile two nights ago.
I'm going to have to think about this. In any case, I still have eighteen episodes of Buffy season 4 for to watch.
I think I'm happiest in my soul when I'm being pensive like this.
I finished taking the GED yesterday. Last time I posted I said only uneducated people with a loose grasp of how to answer simple problems would fail the GED. I stand by that position, but I might've failed math because of it. I mean, when I looked down at the test, my mind went completely blank, and every mathematical solution I'd studied went right out of my head. It probably all traveled down south to Mexico where it settled into the head of a young spanish boy struggling through an exam of his own. Suddenly, he knew all the right answers. He past with flying colors and will live happily ever after, losing his virginity at the age of sixteen to the same teacher who administered the test. They'll do it in the classic Sunday morning position right on her desk and even though she's _really_ hot she knows Kama Sutra so they can go for like six hours and all just because HE stole MY information! And the flying colors he passed with will circle mockingly outside my window and shit on my car, if I ever get one.
I passed, I passed. I think. I have to wait four to six weeks to find out. When I got to the second part of the test and they took that godforsaken calculator away, everything came back to me and things got a lot easier. Now there were fifty questions and I only need a 51% average to pass, and I'm fairly certain I got more than half of those questions right....yeah, I passed. I hope.
So I own a lot of television-on-DVD. Buffy seasons 1-4, Angel season 1, The Shield, Family Guy, Dark Angel, NYPD Blue etc. etc. etc. But once I got serious about studying I swore to myself I wouldn't watch any of them until _after_ I completed the GED. So yesterday I came home with the knowledge that I have entire seasons of television to relive without any studying to hold me back. I got out Buffy season 4 and watched the first three episodes. Before I could finish the third one my sister Sadie came over and I spent the rest of the day with her. If you're wondering where I'm going with this, I'm about to get to that. When my sister left I spent some time with my parents and then I got back to watching Buffy. By now it was about 11:00 o'clock and I always watch tv in the dark at night unless I'm watching Weekend at Bernie's. I was finishing the first disk, the last episode (Fear, Itself) had faded out and Executive Producer: Joss Whedon was white on black on my television screen.
I started to press scene back because there was a scene with good music about a half-hour through and I wanted to watch that again. But before I could, I noticed the reflection of the tv on my pants had...changed. I was wearing my favorite pair of jeans, which I had put on that morning for good luck on finishing the test. They're really, really baggy JNCO jeans with skeleton hands playing bongos. The legs are so wide around that my feet actually disappear under them. So these were the jeans on which the tv was reflecting in the dark after 11 at night. Only as I watched the reflection curiously, I realized that at a certain point around my knee, the reflection was more defined. The light waves were passing over something they could bounce off of better than jeans. And then whatever it was moved, the reflection changed again. It moved down, into a wide crease the pants had made because of the way I was sitting. It disappeared inside of the crease.
I squealed like a pig and thwapped furiously on the opposite side of the crease. I turned on the bedside lamp I bought at Wal-Mart a month-and-a-half ago and quickly pulled up the crease, like pulling off a band-aid.
It was a roach.
Now, 99% people have fears resulting from childhood trauma. My fear is roaches, and I suppose I'll eventually put why in the memories section, which I'm sure Sadie will love to read. The important thing to realize is that when I saw the roach, I screamed (honestly, this time it was a bit more manly, a lot lower than when I usually scream) and lost all control of air flow to my lungs. The roach was half-dead, that much was obvious. It was flattened and battered from my pummeling, it's guts were coming out of its ass and it was dead still...but I know roaches.
I know roaches.
This thing wasn't dead. Not yet. If it's still on you, not in a napkin in a thousand different pieces in the garbage can with holy water sprinkled over the remains and a protection barrier formed from the blood of JC (Jesus Christ, not John Carpenter) encircling the trashcan, that roach will never die. It will just appear dead so that you toss it away. And then the vengeance stalking will begin.
So I carefully grasped two points of my jeans and started to stand up on one leg while keeping the roach on my pants. This way, it wouldn't leave my sight. If you drop it on the floor, it'll scurry towards the dark, and then the vengeance stalking will begin.
Unfortunately for me, it moved. Not the "oh, I'm dying, I'm going to crawl around pointlessly, gasping my last breaths and then die ten seconds later" move. The "I was just pretending to die and the stuff you beat out of me that's oozing like chip dip onto a plate of Lays is really just a decoy I use to fool my enemies but since your not falling for it, I'll be heading off now" move. In other words, the roach unflattened, got up on all six legs and, with its insides leaving a trail on my pants, began to walk off my leg. I squealed again, not manly-like at all, and then in a knee-jerk reaction my elbow shot out and hit the bedside light. I heard the bulb inside *pop* and it went out.
Last week, I gave the only other light I had in my room, a five-foot lamp with a cover and vanilla base, to my mother because it was taking up too much space in my room and kept knocking over my Todd McFarlane horror movie character action figures stituated on the bookshelf next to it every time I went to sleep and it knew I wasn't looking.
I was in darkness again with the bedroom door seven feet away and the only light was that tiny Executive Producer: Joss Whedon white light on black from the tv. The roach was once again just a strong moving reflection on my big baggy jeans. I had to keep the roach on my leg, get to the door, open it, get the roach off of me and then I could worry about killing it.
So I stood up on one leg and started to hop, holding my other leg out in front of me. I could feel it moving now, and as we moved from the light of the tv the feeling of it crawling down my leg was the only way I had of telling the it was still on me, and that for now I was safe from the vengeance stalking. We got to the door and I reached out, grabbed the knob, twisted and yanked it open-
Just as the roach made a desperate leap onto my THANKYOUGOD!!! sock-covered foot.
(Lyle stops writing and puts some socks on...there)
I squealed AGAIN and shook my foot so fast it became a blur. He fell down onto the floor outside in the hallway, but then doubled back into the darkness of my room. I was doomed unless I acted quickly.
I jumped into the hall, ran out into the kitchen and asked my Dad if I could I have a new bulb. I explained the present situation and, as a fellow roach-hater, I went on about my business with his blessing. I got a new bulb (the last one we had) and quickly ran back into the dark room, replaced the bulb, and turned around.
There he was.
He had found the darkest spot he could have hidden in in such a short amount of time. He had hidden against the back of the door. I walked calmly over, picked up one of my sixty dollar church shoes that Nanny bought me while I was visiting North Carolina back in spring (that's sixty dollars for Each of the two shoes [my Nanny is f*cking crazy]) and I obliterated him. The is still an abscess-like stain on the door.
I picked up the thousand remains in a napkin, through them all in the trash and performed the necessary rituals. Then I took a forty-minute shower.
In the aftermath of such an ordeal, I'm not sure whether I should blame the pants. You could say I picked him up while walking to Wal-Mart yesterday. And because they're so huge, he was able to make himself a home until that night without me ever noticing. Or you could say that they acted as my protector. So thick were they that he could not find his way to my tender flesh. And so big were they that he was forced to crawl up, into the light of the television in order to see where he was going.
I haven't decided yet.
And eerily enough, while my sister was here we had spoken about my first encounter with a killer roach...on that lonesome easter weekend back in ninety-six.
One final note on this; every time I've been attacked by a roach (there have been three battles, last night being the shortest of all), there was a need for change in my life. The roach has, in both previous times, symbolized that change. The first, longest and most arduous roach fight led to the cleaning of my very messy room. It's never been that messy again. The second marked my trip to North Carolina last spring, as well as my eventual destruction of my bunk bed.
And now there is this. Does the roach symbolize that my taking the GED has opened many doors and that now I must choose which one to walk through. Or has my karma taken a serious blow from not giving blood to the bloodmobile two nights ago.
I'm going to have to think about this. In any case, I still have eighteen episodes of Buffy season 4 for to watch.
I think I'm happiest in my soul when I'm being pensive like this.