Every day I use the stairs in my building. It hardly counts as excercize, but it does more so than taking the elevator. Therefore I take the stairs so that when I finally do have my first heart attack I can say, "But I take the stairs," and everyone will say, "That's just horrible," and they'll all seriously doubt the conventional wisdom that tells us "Our hearts are important."
Anyway, last Tuesday I went downstairs at the end of my day, and as I reached the bottom of the stairs I saw a dead cockroach. The roach had clearly succumbed to the pressures of government work, if the pay doesn't get you the lack of respect from society in general will, and so he threw himself under the next passing shoe. I can't say that I haven't considered doing this myself in the past.
Or maybe it wasn't suicide. Maybe the current cockroach-administration decided that his job wasn't important anymore. Only they didn't want to appear too "insensitive" to other cockroaches, so rather than lay him off, with a million tiny mouths to feed, they gave him the most dreaded assignment a roach can receive: to walk defiantly before a human. Sure, if you live you are a hero; the stuff of cockroach legends and Mexican folk tunes, but how many actually live?
His (or her) end had been particularly brutal. Though every leg did appear to be attached to some part of the body, the body itself was not attached to itself completely. There was some here and some there. It appeared as though the offending shoe had not be satisfied to merely step, but opted to step and pivot, and perhaps even to grind. And thus did a low wage earning cockroach, from the Cockroach Department of Labor, meet his end.
Anyway, that was 7 days ago, Tuesday, September 26, 2006. Today, Monday, October 2, 2006, our cockroach is still sitting at the bottom of the stairs. We do have a cleaning staff, but apparently the stairwell is not high on their agenda. Clearly no one of import takes the stairs, so who cares if it is clean and free of roach cadavers?
Well, I care. Poor Leroy Roach is decaying in my walking path. It is totally uncivilized.
In the last seven days Leroy's family probably hasn't even noticed. I imagine his wife has already shacked up with another roach. His children already call the new man 'papa roach.' And his favorite chair, a stale frosted flake, is already inhabited by the new head of house. If Leroy had known when he was alive that his loss would go unnoticed; that he was so easy to replace, so easy to forget, so easily forgotten, he'd have been crushed.
Well I noticed Leroy. You and I are not so different. We both spent way too much damn time in this government building! We both took the stairs for our health. We both felt the heel of the man on our backs. You and I are brothers, Leroy (except that I find you and your kind totally disgusting). And I will lament your passing a little bit every time I go down the stairs. And when I imagine that I can smell your insides, and I start to lose my lunch, I will know that it is not nausea that affects me, but injustice. And I will pray that someday a giant foot does not smash me into oblivion. And I will record, for all of my blog readers, the status of your unnatural resting place. Consider it a monument to you, Leroy -- as close to becoming my hero as a cockroach can. Which is not at all.
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3 comments:
Hilarious! Oddly moving but hysterical nonetheless.
Today there's a big round piece of chocolate on the stairs. I thought about picking it up and bringing to to you. But I didn't want to steal food from the roach widow and her 7.4 million children.
That's a tough call. On the one had you have this family that has so easily and callously moved on from Leroy's demise. On the other hand, these are Leroy's offspring, his brood. What would he want? On the third hand, I'd love a piece of dirty chocolate. But on the fourth hand I wouldn't love it if millions of diseasey roaches have already taken turns at it.
I guess I'm glad you did not bring it to me.
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