A TALE OF FLYING COCKROACHES BY SALLY COKER

Hey guys! Sorry we are late…enjoy!

‘”I consider he with the ability to kill a flying roach with one hit a legend for he doth show great courage in the face of even greater fear'”. – Anonymous

Let me state it expressly that I hate lizards more than I hate roaches however flying cockroaches are way above lizards, on the same level with… its just the worst ok? See, its one thing to wake up in the middle of the night for a snack, turn on the lights in the kitchen and BAM! There is a cockroach or more scurrying away. It is a totally different thing to be sitting in the living room, watching TV at 11 pm and one or more (shudders) roaches choose to make appearance by flight. That is just rude; besides it being disgusting.

Has a flying cockroach robbed you of sleep? No? Then you haven’t lived. If you happen to love sleep as much as I do then you’d agree with me that no cockroach will make it to heaven. I even believe they are straight from the depths of hell and my opinion can not be changed, thank you very much. There was this night a while ago; I had had a long day. It was already past 10 and I didn’t even want to watch TV I just wanted to sleep. I had barely drifted off to lala land when a huge cockroach flew and landed straight onto my arm. I jumped off the bed immediately; the alarms in my head screamed:

“What the actual hell?!!!’

I ran and turned on the lights but couldn’t find the cockroach on my bed. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or anxious. I searched around the bed and still didn’t find it. My heart started to slow down to its normal rate. I kept thinking ‘please this thing should not come out again, I just want to sleep. Please God. Please God’. I turned off the lights and went back to sleep.

Like 5 minutes later the thing out of nowhere landed on my face!

“Arrrghhhhhhhhhhh”

My dad came rushing into my room.

“Nne! Nne, what is it? What is it?”

I was just holding my face and shaking like I had been poured a bucket of ice water. I didn’t know exactly how to tell my dad that I had screamed because a cockroach had landed on my face. So, I told him that ‘something’ landed on my face while I was sleeping.

“Something? What something this girl? Ha ga’e vofutagi ogbanje. I thought somebody was trying to stab you here, do you want to wake everybody on this street up?”

Ha ga’e vofutagi ogbanje (something about ogbanje being dug out for me; it’s a long story but if you’re Igbo or you’ve read Things Fall Apart, you’d probably understand)

My dad checked around the room and didn’t find anything, I wasn’t expecting him to; I had checked earlier and didn’t find anything. He left the room angrily with more promises of ogbanje being dug for me. I really couldn’t care, I was only bothered the about fact that I wasn’t going to get any sleep that night until that cockroach was killed. After looking around for a while, I returned to my bed with the lights still on. I’d heard that roaches were nocturnal and so I figured they wouldn’t also like light from an electric bulb. That roach was actually messing with my head that night because like 10 minutes later it flew past my face. At that very point I felt I was in a bad horror movie.

The roach flew past my face again and landed on the wall directly opposite me and for a split second I imagined it saying:

“Catch me if you can bitch”

I knew the roach was ready to do battle. I jumped off the bed and I went for a shoe, in my mind I was like:

“Let’s do this”

I moved close to the wall and struck. Of course I missed. My hand was shaking so much that I wouldn’t have been able to put food into my own mouth successfully. The roach flew higher. I thought ‘today is today; I will kill this thing if it’s the last thing I do’.

I kept up with this charade with the roach for about 15 minutes. By this time my shoes were scattered all over the room; I was trying anything even throwing my shoes at the roach when it flew too high. Sometimes the roach would fly past me with that horrible buzz it makes and I would feel it was teasing me, saying:

“Is that all you got bitch?”

I was done with throwing shoes, so I ran out to get a broom from the kitchen. Brethren, those brooms do more than sweep the house believe me. (Rule number 1: brooms are more effective in killing roaches). I switched to the broom but I still couldn’t hit the roach because I was too nervous to aim properly. (Rule number 2: never encourage fear when you want to kill a flying roach; be confident. Believe that you have wings and you will fly.)

In the midst of frustration, I thought; how can a cockroach be using my head like this? I started to calm my nerves and counted to 20. Advancing slowly towards the wall where the roach was perched, I reached out my hand and struck. Bull’s eye! I hit the roach and it fell straight to the ground. This is exactly how I felt at that moment:

                                                                                                       That’s right! Bite the freaking dust!

I achieved something significant that day; well first I was able to get some sleep. Even though I am no exterminator, I feel I can take out any stinking flying cockroach because I realised that in killing one, you have to overcome your fear for it first which is the first step; and then the rest, they say, is history.

Have a good weekend!