Marcus vs. The Roach
Not since Joe versused the volcano has there been a greater clash of titans. Upon arriving home tonight I went into the bathroom to take a shower, but found that the tub was already occupied by a medium sized roach. Now, roaches are not my biggest fear, but I am not fond of them and avoid dealing with them when I can. This time was no different at first. I simply closed the shower door and trapped him in, after all I could skip one shower, and tomorrow would have been a better time to deal with it. When I went back to the bathroom though to brush my teeth I thought, "Be a man Marcus, catch that roach. Forget about getting roach spray, just grab about 30 paper towels and form a catchers-mit-thick layer around your hand and just grab it." So that was my plan, grab it, while making what I am assuming is not an attractive face, and then quickly toss it in the toilet. But standing over it in the tub, knowing that if an antennae caught the paper towel before I caught the roach it would scramble, possibly in my direction. Thus, there was quite the stand-off. When I did make my move he slipped out of iron-clad grip and moved onto the inside wall of the tub. After contemplating another attempt like that, I decided on trying another approach. (The situation was quickly becoming Sandlot-esque) Thinking that I could use my grandparents removable shower head to wash the roach into the drain or get the roach to flip over, I thought I might then have an easier time grabbing it. The water though only made it run, which was expected, but the walls of the tub were too slippery and the roach struggled to escape the water. This did not last long as I don't have much of a stomach when it comes to watching things struggle for their life like that, even roaches. My third plan I thought to be most brilliant and a sure thing. Now that the roach was sitting on a flat part of the tub I could more easily trap it under something, like say a trash can and try to get it to crawl in, but that usually doesn't work. Then, I thought, "What this situation needs is more wasted paper towels." Grabbing two more paper towels off the roll I soaked them under the sink faucet and then wrung them out, leaving them with the desired weight. My plan was to drop the paper towels over the roach, which would then be prevented from running because the weight of the water remaining in the towels would be too much, and as you may know, a bit of suction is formed when you drop a wet paper towel on the ground flat, as I was planning. That part of the plan went perfectly. The roach was trapped. Now to grab with the already collected mass of towels from before. At this point I could think of only one thing that might go wrong. I grabbed the roach, a crunch sounded throughout the bathroom, a shiver went up my spine. Then holding it over the toilet I released my grasp to find my biggest fear (that is, my biggest fear in this particular situation, not my biggest fear which was previously mentioned in this entry and is not roaches) was coming true. The roach did not fall into the toilet as planned, instead I found it, after a shake of one hand, to have crawled onto the back of my other hand. And then, in that instant, my hand, sending the message to my brain, "Get this roach off of me!" and my brain sending the message back to both my arm and hand, "Swing about frantically." and to my voice related body parts, "Do not scream like a little girl as you would like to, others are asleep." And so, I could not have gotten that roach to fly off my hand fast enough. It then found itself underneath the cabinet's edge where I could not see it and I was in no mood to squat down to look really, I think it lost a leg though. I exited the room and then got down to check. Where it was I do not know, perhaps it returned through the crevice which it came from. I do not care as long as it is not crawling on my toothbrush right now. In the end, I definitely lost that battle as I found myself pulling a number of paper towels out of the toilet without even a dead roach to show for it.