Why would anybody want to wander through a cockroach museum?
I just read an article that made my skin crawl and a memory surface from decades ago. I was looking for an apartment to rent for myself and my daughter, one I could afford on the measly salary I was making. I found one.
So I called the phone number in the paper and asked to see the apartment. After getting directions and driving there, I approached the front steps and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I walked around the side and a little bitty woman met me.
She looked me over and announced, “I no think you wanna see it.”
What?
“I no think you gonna like it.”
“Well, I’m here, so you might as well show me.”
She repeated her “I no think you gonna like it.” But I stupidly insisted on seeing it.
“OK,” she sighed, “But front door is broken. We have to climb through window.”
I should have seen that as a giant red flag and left immediately. But I didn’t.
I followed her through the window and as soon as my feet touched the floor in the pitch black room, she said, “Stay there. I gonna turn on light.”
When she turned on the light, I immediately found myself in a horror film. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were moving. I must be drugged. I must be hallucinating. How could the room be moving?
No, something was moving ON the walls, making the walls, the floors, and the ceiling appear to be moving. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw all around me, scattered and running around every square inch of the apartment, thousands (I’m not kidding) of cockroaches. I was afraid to move. I was afraid they were crawling up my pants, but I was also in a state of shock.
I blindly followed the woman around the apartment as the cockroaches scattered away from my feet. Why I didn’t run out the window immediately, I’ll never know. I don’t remember anything she said. All I remember is trying not to seem rude, but being frightened nearly to death by the sheer number of cockroaches in varying sizes, from very tiny to huge, and everything in between, swarming the walls, the ceilings, and the floors.
When I finally left the apartment, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had brought along with me many of the cockroaches I had seen in that apartment. I shook my pants legs until I thought the neighbors might have thought I was having a seizure.
What reminded me about this incident was an article I just read by Pat Bartels, called The Infamous Cockroach Hall of Fame and Museum in Plano, Texas. I had to read it, because I thought she had the location misidentified. The actual Cockroach Museum was in Harvey, Illinois. I know. I visited it once.
If you dare to read the article, click on the link above. The article itself is kind of funny. Can you imagine dressing up dead cockroaches? I can’t even imagine touching one of them.
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