Adventures as a Grown Up

Visitor in my apartment!

I started this blog to keep track of all of the moments that I find myself questioning if i’m really a grown up yet, or not. The first major one that comes to mind was a few weeks into living in my first apartment. Mary and KC (her dog) were not the only visitors that week!

Now, this is a basement apartment, and it’s fairly small, so before moving in I mentally prepared myself for some visitors. But it’s the first one that always gets you!I came home from somewhere and Mary and KC were out for a walk. As I flicked on the lamp in my tiny living room I saw something black scurry across the dingy carpet. I figured it was a bug of some kind so I let it go and put my stuff down.

When I decided to investigate the dark blob near the table, I inched my way over. I was about three feet away and bending towards it when an antenna moved and I screamed like a five year old. It was a roach! The first one living in someones dwelling I had ever seen.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen them. I know they exist. But, not in someones home. I guess it was his home too!

This one was about the size of my thumb and as though I was going to scare it away I slowing backed away from my tiny roommate and grabbed my cell phone. What the heck was I supposed to do with it? I needed to get a second opinion about how to kill it because i figured a shoe wouldn’t do the trick. Before calling my brother, my dad, and my step-dad. I trapped the critter under a coffee mug because I didn’t want it to hide from me.

Three phone calls and 15 minutes later, I decided to find Mary and KC and seek help in the dicision to hit it with a shoe (which I still wasn’t convinced was going to work). I found the two of them up at the tennis courts near my apartment and explained to Mary when the game of fetch needed to come to an end and that as a 25 year old I needed help killing something.

Mary remained very calm and when we got home we teamed up against the roach. We put the dog in the bedroom (as she would have tried to eat the bug if it tried to run) and slowing I lifted the mug and Mary went at it with the heal of a tennis shoe.  It took a few good hits but she slowed it down enough to then stop and pin it to the carpet. I swear I heard the thing crunch underneath her weight on the carpet. It didn’t try to run this time when she picked up the shoe.

I don’t think either of us took a breath until its remains were flushed down the toilet.

Since then, I have come home to one other roach visitor but countless spiders and other random bugs. The second one I trapped on the wall and was able to leave it under a cup long enough for it go belly up! The others I grab a paper towell and inch my way close enough and jab at them until they are dead. Yes, I still scream! and yes, I get the willies. But, I do it! Does this make me an adult?