My biggest fear has 6 legs

When I was younger, my biggest fear was failure.

I was always worried that I wouldn't be good enough, that I'd be broke, or fired, or dumped. All that equaled failure to me, and it was terrifying.

Then I got dumped. Then I graduated from college, and then graduated from college again with my Masters degree. Then I got married. Then I got laid off. So, once you've experienced a good amount of both successes and failures and realize that it's not the end of the world when you do fail and that you CAN succeed, it's time to get a new biggest fear.

Around that time we moved to Florida, and a terrifying new world opened to me: a world with lots of legs, antennae and pre-historic looking exoskeletons.

The world of roaches.

Now, nothing in this world frightens me as much as cockroaches. Lizards? Love em. Mice? I mean, not my favorite but whatever. Snakes? Please stay away, but I am only mildly scared.

When I see a cockroach, I scream like I'm being stabbed with a butter knife, and it's not just one scream, it's a long, drawn out, "there-is-a-serial-killing-clown-in-our-garage-please-someone-help" scream. I run and slam doors. I refuse to step foot in our garage where they love to chill near the trash can. Sometimes I scream at the thought of them being there. If they are in the house FOR-GET it. I will have a panic attack on your ass, TRUST ME.

Back in WV it seems like we had an ant problem every spring, and as much as they grossed me out, I always sort of felt sorry for them. They were just harmless babies of the insect world, trying to find a delicious meal of cereal or rice to take back to their queen. And good on them for picking up that giant piece of cat food that's 14 billion times their size and carrying it all the way back to their nest.

But cockroaches? To me, cockroaches are a sign of dirty-ness and living in squalor. Cockroaches are scavengers and harbingers of disease.

And they are also apparently all around and COMPLETELY NORMAL. One of my co-workers has them in her mailbox, so when she opens it they scatter and then she reaches in and gets her mail. OVER MY DEAD BODY would I EVER get the mail again. I'd be all, credit card companies, sorry, but you're just going to have to wait for my payment because the cockroaches are currently holding my mail hostage with their tiny little feet and 18 kneecaps. Sick.

Apparently there is nothing you can do -- they are just a part of life down there in the dirty South (is THAT why it's called the dirty South??). I was talking about (what I believe to be) our cockroach infestation and what we were planning on doing to about it and my work friend said, "well good luck with that. Nothing helps. They'll leave in the winter."


O.M.G.

Here is a chart to express my hatred of cockroaches:

TRUE STORY ALERT: This weekend I was home alone, right? And so I was getting ready to shower before bed, took my contacts out, turned the water on and noticed  A GIANT COCKROACH on the wall above the shower. I called my husband and was sobbing about this darn cockroach because what am I supposed to do? It's my biggest fear COME TO LIFE and staring me in the face. I asked him to come home from his conference, but when he told he he couldn't do that, I had him walk me step by step through the process of killing the cockroach dead. It included multiple steps, starting with "throw a magazine at it" and "hit it with a shoe".


Then after I killed it, I put on my glasses and discovered it was actually a beetle.


IT COULD HAVE BEEN A COCKROACH, you guys. You have to be diligent about those nasty things.


According to British researchers at the University of Nottingham's School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, cockroaches could be the key to fending off harmful, drug-resistant bacteria (DO NOT CLICK ON THIS IF YOU ARE TERRIFIED OF COCKROACHES OR GROSSED OUT BY BUGS).

I'm sorry, but e coli is one billion and a half times better than cockroaches.

What is your biggest fear? Do you hate insects? What do you think is worse than cockroaches?