"Imagine your worst nightmare... Now, imagine it with wings." - Steph

Leading up to the day of my interview, I was most concerned about preparing for tough interview questions. What I hadn’t anticipated was where I would freshen up before the interview. I was interviewing for a patent attorney trainee position at a Wrays; a firm located in West Perth. It was only a short distance from where we live, so I decided I’d walk to the interview. Steph came along for the walk too. We left well ahead of the scheduled interview time and stopped at a café for a milkshake and iced coffee just around the corner from the firm. Because I sweat considerably more than the average person, I had worn a regular shirt for the walk with the hope of using a public rest room to change into my dress shirt and jacket. Like all of my plans, this was a good one – foolproof even. Because the cost of dinning out in Australia is significantly higher than what we were used to in Canada, Steph and I hadn’t treated ourselves to many meals or drinks out. We learned moments before my interview that many cafes do not have public rest rooms. Larger restaurants do, but their policy is patrons only. So I found myself in a little bit of a pickle.  Where to change?

After poking our heads into a number of establishments, explaining the situation, and being refused access to rest rooms, it was time to form an alternative plan; the parking garage. Tossing clothes back and forth with Steph, I transformed into my professional persona between a couple parked vehicles. To the common passer-by it must have seemed to be a very peculiar scene indeed. I made it to the interview on time looking as sharp as ever. The interview went well and I’ll hear their verdict by the end of the week. Fingers crossed.

That night I was relaxing in bed reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo when I heard a scream from the kitchen. I marked my page and went to see what the commotion was. Steph had felt something scurry along her foot; something big. My initial interpretation of this information was: a small bug had run across her foot and she was over-reacting. I couldn’t have been more wrong. No Sooner did these thoughts cross my mind and a monstrosity of a bug saunters out beneath the refrigerator. This startled me quite suddenly and I reacted on instinct by jumping backward. Steph screamed, ran away, and locked herself in the bedroom with strict orders for me to kill the bug. The bug was a giant cockroach (cocky). I immediately set off to find my shoe; my weapon of choice in these matters. The cocky turned out to be a worthy opponent as it was equipped with wings and could fly quite well (something Steph had failed to mention). But still it was no match for me. I patiently waited for the opportune moment… SMACK - a direct hit. It lay there motionless. Steph slowly made her way out of the bedroom to confirm the kill. She wasn’t convinced, but I assured her that there had been a solid crunch upon impact. We were proud of ourselves. We were the victors of our first cocky invasion. Or so we thought. We placed a deck of cards next to the body (for scale) and took pictures to document the event. And that’s when the legs started moving slowly. It wasn’t dead, and was regaining consciousness. With a cracked exoskeleton and broken legs it stood up. We had a fighter on our hands. SMACK! Now it was dead. For good measure I flushed it down the toilet. And Steph followed suit with four more flushes as insurance.

An unconscious Australian cocky.

We checked the rest of the apartment for any signs of a cockroach infestation. There was no evidence, so we concluded, somewhat confidently, that the cocky must have flown through the open window. I had found this whole event rather entertaining and was grinning from ear to ear. Steph did not share my feelings. She was a little rattled and spent the remainder of the evening researching cockroaches and how to kill them. She stumbled upon some websites with suspect credibility that fed her anxiety. They falsely stated that cockroaches are born pregnant and when you kill them their babies, sometimes too small to see, scatter in all directions. She tried to shed light on her terror with the following statement: “Imagine your worst nightmare… Now, imagine it with wings.” This didn’t really help, because the nightmare I had envisioned was falling from a tall building and plummeting to my death. Wings would have made the nightmare a dream come true. But I got her point. I slept soundly that night; Steph barely a wink.