cockroaches do skeeve me out to the point where, the last time I saw one inside a few years ago - it was right after I'd just moved into this fairly shitty rental in the middle of summer so naturally it had wandered inside either due to us keeping the doors open most of the weekend while moving furniture in or otherwise had been occupying the empty house and was forced out into the open, but either way that motherfucker crawled on my glass desk at like 2:30am while I was sitting there hitting my bong and the next thing I know bong water was everywhere, the cockroach was crawling on my arm, the embers of weed were burning a hole into my boxers, and my roommate's dog was losing its shit in the other room hearing me lose my shit. up i sprung, out of my chair, and smacked the back of my hand into the wall (in what may still be to this day my fastest feat of reflex I've ever done) - crushing the bastard against my fucking knuckles. my roommate said she'd never forget standing in the hallway, thinking I'd had a seizure or something, only to witness me come stomping out of my room with ash all over my boxers, cockroach guts on the back of my hand/wrist, and a stare like I'd seen my best friend kill my childhood dog before closing the bathroom door and spending the next hour in the shower. did not sleep that night and drove to the hardware store at 8am to buy like two pounds of diatomaceous earth which I then basically dusted the entire house with.

my mother, having grown up in places with german cockroaches - does not understand my fear of palmetto bugs, which are what cockroaches are to me (and what that bastard was that night), because in her opinion - german cockroaches are far worse due to being smaller but I'd rather an infestation of fuckers I can't see anywhere but in my pantry rather than fuckers that FLY AND ARE AS LONG AS YOUR INDEX FINGER