raising the bar

If you've lived in New York long enough, you've probably got a good cockroach story or three. I happen to have about ten but it's not because I'm a dirty person, I swear! I'm just a little messy. Anyway, as Drone and I were leaving my apartment building this evening to go for a walk, I heard him mumbling behind me. "There's something in my shoe...I've gotta get it out now or it's going to bug me." (Pun not possibly intentional at this point.) I turned around to see the shoe be thrown to the ground and Drone say "oh my god" for about three solid minutes with a look of sheer panic on his face. Clearly it was a bug in there, but I didn't know the gravity of the situation until he collected himself enough to dump out a two-inch, intact cockroach from his New Balance sneaker. I had phantom "something in my shoe" feelings for the whole walk. And stomach pains from laughing so damn hard. I'm still a little creeped out since the cockroach clearly came from my apartment, but vermin are pretty unavoidable here, as evidenced by the footlong rat we later saw scurrying into a nice brownstone on 77th. Oh, New York...