roaches

MPLS.1
Gotta get these stories down before pre-senile dementia hits and I won't be able to tell whether they're  true or not. So this is number one (MPLS.1).

July 1990. There are cockroaches here. A lot of them. You have to keep the Rice Krispie's in the fridge. Some get in there even. They skitter across the floor with an intuitive sense of obvious impunity. They are too fast to kill. You stop trying. You decide to work with them. Sharing space with respect.

So you turn on the kitchen light by reaching around the corner. It gives them time to run for cover. In return, they stay off the furniture and don't crawl on your face in the early morning hours. It's cockroach detente. A cold-war cockroach standoff.

And then you get a good job and move out. I'm sure the cockroaches throw a party and toast their victory. "Yeah, we win again ... puny humans ... yeah, pour me a bit of that rancid milk. Aaaahhh! The cockroach life."

I really think they do that, but I don't know, I moved out of their neighborhood and into a house in the ghetto. The cockroaches there were all meth-heads. They mostly stole from the ants. Solving two problems at once. I think I must have carried some cockroach cred - word on the street sort of stuff. "Dude is cool." In cockroach street terms.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that if you have to move to the city and stay one step above cardboard-hobo-camping down by the river. Befriend the cockroaches first. They will pave your way into big city survival.