Family Alive

I’m going to admit something here. It’s taking quite a bit of courage, but I think there are people out there will appreciate and commisserate with me… hopefully. If not, I’m just going to scare off all future dinner guests, as you’ll see from my story.

I hate cockroaches. I think they’re so gross and ugly. When I lived in Nicaragua, they were a part of life, though, and I managed to deal with them. I can’t kill them – something about the crunching, ew. Anyway, I kept my room clean and pretended that they didn’t encroach on my personal territory, though I knew they frolicked right outside my door. It was part of life, because things just weren’t as clean and most of the homes are an indoor/outdoor mix of rooms and courtyards. I figured it was impossible to keep them out, so I’d just ignore them.

I’m apalled to find that there are cockroaches here in Alabama, or “palmetto bugs” as Brian’s grandma in South Carolina calls them. (I say a cockroach by any other name is still gross and ugly.) Anyway, we occassionally see them in our house. Hiring a pest control company is EXPENSIVE, but I think every day we see one, we get closer to justifying the price!

On to my stories… Saturday evening we had a friend over for dinner. As we were enjoying conversation and dinner, I spied a cockroach running across the wall to our guest’s left, staying just behind her vision. It was out of Brian’s eyesight, too. I sat there watching it slowly move across the wall, agonizing about what to do. Interrupt dinner to kill a cockroach? Unthinkable. Ignore it, and hope no one else notices? This appeared to be the least painful option, especially as the intruder dropped out of sight. And in fact, that’s what I did, and we made it through dinner without event or embarrassment. I told Brian later that evening, after the cockroach made his appearance again, and Brian took care of him.

Last night was our weekly home church, where we host 13 people for dinner, fellowship and discussion. As everyone was hanging in the kitchen doorway, saying goodnight, a cockroach ran across the wall above everyone, largely in my eyesight, though I’m not sure anyone else saw it. This was the largest cockroach I’d ever seen. I couldn’t ignore it, and was mortally embarrased to move everyone away from the wall into the foyer to finish our goodbyes. Everyone consoled me that it happens every now and then, and tried to reassure me that it probably had come in when someone opened the door. Still, I wonder if they’re going to come back next week… I’m so embarassed. Can anyone commisserate with me??