The Mysterious Case
of the Beleaguered Cockroach

Some time back, due to the pugnacious behavior of mean-spirited bacteria having invaded the otherwise tasty tacos I’d consumed for dinner, I found myself in the wee hours of the morning perched preemptively, not unlike Rodin’s “Thinker”, atop a white porcelain thrown and surveying my kingdom through the short cardboard telescope that lay nearby. (Don’t judge me! And don’t even pretend that you’ve never killed time in a comparably inane manner while similarly stranded with no other means of entertainment.)

Eventually, my gaze came to rest upon a member of the lowest caste within my fiefdom, and after overcoming my initial repulsion at the despicable nature of his existence (after all, he might have provided logistical support for the very bacteria that currently waged war upon my innards) I began to ponder this peon’s plight.

Speaking of repulsion: My wife’s gonna have a cow when she reads that I admitted to a roach invading our home.

Back to my friend: The steep glossy walls of the porcelain tub in which he found himself, proved too much for even his suction-cup laden limbs and he was trapped in what must have appeared to him as a vast white canyon. Attempt after attempt to scale the steep white cliff failed, and he slid exhaustedly back to the canyon floor.

Admittedly, he had enough water and perhaps a few discarded human skin cells to provide survival sustenance, but somewhere in the back of his mind — either from conversations with other cockroaches or from some ancient genetic coding — he must have suspected that too much of a good thing (i.e. the water he gorged himself on) might come his way in torrents and end his days above dirt.

As a last resort, the little fellow even flapped his wings vigorously in a vain attempt to emulate the bees he’d witnessed, but either the cruelty of evolution or his sedentary lifestyle rendered him too heavy to achieve anything beyond a feeble stunted lift-off attempt. He was trapped in an environment beyond his comprehension, with no escape and no hope of amending his fate.

Perhaps it was our temporary shared exile that created empathy towards my little brown friend, but I began to wonder what he was thinking. Was he angry at his victimhood and resentful towards the human oppressors who created this sadistic porcelain trap? Did he blame global warming for his unhappy circumstances? Did he curse God for not intervening? Did he resent cockroaches of another tribe and coloration for their lack of similar suffering? Did he rue his decision to leave the harsh environs of the garden and explore the comforts of indoor living? Was he melancholic about the prospect of never eating his grandkids?

Admittedly, when I went back to bed, I forgot all about that fellow’s problems and it was days later before I entered our guest bathroom and noticed him no longer in residence. Had a mouse eaten him? If so, the thought of even larger home invaders gave me a shudder.

Had he channeled his inner Tony Robins and mustered some super-cockroachean strength to fly the coop? That too left me with a sense of unease; perhaps I should have squashed him when I had the opportunity. I prefer to think he wriggled through that claustrophobic gap in the drain plug and crawled to freedom through two hundred yards of unimaginable filth and stench just like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption.

That little insect’s predicament reminded me in many ways of our own, or perhaps I was just mapping silly human excuses and coping mechanisms onto my prehistoric friend. Like Andy said, regardless of our circumstances, we just need to jettison our excuses and get busy living or get busy dying.

A meeting of great minds who think alike