My Mortifying Morning

I had a challenging morning. Yesterday my van broke down and a dear friend loaned me her car because I had an interview scheduled this morning. As I was on my way to the interview I realize the address I had for the interview location is not correct, my GPS was not finding it. So I'm starting to get a little nervous. As I'm scanning the road, I hear this strange sound coming from the back of the car. I look in the back seat and see a Madagascar cockroach crawling along on a paper grocery bag. You might wonder how I knew what it was. . . . years ago I had taken the boys to a week long Science camp and one of the activities at this camp was that the boys could let these Madagascar cockroaches climb on their hands. I don't think my boys did that, and I for sure know that I did not, cockroaches top my list for most disgusting critter. They make me a little crazy, I am not sure why, but I have such a fearful reaction to them. Thankfully they do not reside in our house so it's not usually a huge issue. Seeing this humungous roach almost did me in. I'm thankful I did not swerve and crash on the road as it sent me into an even greater panic. I quickly pulled over and called a friend that had referred me for this job, and he was able to give me the correct address so I was able to quickly find the location. I bolted out of the car as soon as I possibly could and went in for my interview, distracted. . . thinking of the car ride home. I managed to get through the interview and told her about the incident for some comic relief. She told me there was no way she would get back in that car if it was her, but it was me and I had the dilemma of figuring out how to get that gross thing out of the car.

I opened the driver side car door and immediately saw it crawling along the bottom rim. I slammed the car door, hoping it does him in, but it doesn't and it's still crawling along. I tried a few more times when the thought entered my mind to open the door on the opposite side. When I had bolted out of the side of the car that I saw the first one on, lo and behold I saw the original guy, realizing the one on the driver door is critter #2! Now I have two Madagascar cockroaches to contend with on opposite sides of the car. At this point, prayer is happening, and I need a way out of this situation which feels like a total nightmare! If I was on any type of surveillance camera it would be pretty comical. I kept going back and forth and slamming the car doors. Amazingly I was able to get the one on the passenger side to fall off onto the concrete. It flipped on it's back, but quickly recovered and crawled under the car. Continued fervent prayer. Have I mentioned how much I completely hate roaches of any kind?

With added determination I open the car door on the driver's side to see the guy continuing to saunter along the rim. I walked around the parking lot looking for a stick to flick it off, but all I could find were flimsy twigs that were of no use. I spotted a discarded windshield wiper in the parking lot, picked it up, and folded it in half to get some leverage. It took me a few try's but I was finally able to flick it out onto the pavement to join his counterpart. Wondering if there were any more in this roach coach, I did a quick scan and did not see any so I hopped in and headed home as fast as I possibly could. It was a very long drive, much longer than the way there. I drove the rest of the way home hunched against the steering wheel and praying. I could hear more ruffling so I was pretty sure there was more. . .  . I was so done when I got home and it was only 10:30 a.m. I sent Jacob, our resident critter catcher, out to investigate for me. We scoured the car and found a dead one and another live one. Using a garden glove, he was able to get the hiding roach out and put an end to it's life. I paid him to vacuum the car out for me, just in case.

I texted my friend that had so graciously loaned me the car and she immediately called me back apologized profusely and realized that another friend of hers had returned the car to them this week. He leads Science camps and uses the roaches, just like the one I had taken the boys to years ago. In fact, he was the same teacher of this camp I had taken them to so long ago.  I guess he forgot that he had them in their car. Yeah, we got a good laugh about the irony of it all.

It was a morning I will never forget (it probably took a few years off my life) but it also showed me that fear does not have to get the best of me. When I was driving home and praying that none of them would fall or crawl on me, I told myself that they would not hurt me if they did happen to get on me. I survived and learned a lesson in fear. So how was your morning?