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swamp fox (swamphox@noagendasocial.com)'s status on Monday, 01-Jan-2024 01:20:47 JST

swamp fox

in reply to

Hombre Lego Mexicano

@Grandtheftautism @PNS how the hell were you able have such a long post? Have character limits been removed?

Machismo (zerglingman@freespeechextremist.com)'s status on Monday, 01-Jan-2024 01:20:47 JST

Machismo

in reply to

@swamphox @PNS @Grandtheftautism
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Hombre Lego Mexicano (grandtheftautism@freespeechextremist.com)'s status on Monday, 01-Jan-2024 01:20:48 JST

Hombre Lego Mexicano

in reply to

@PNS when I was five, ny parents and I moved to Texas. I had never seen roaches before, but everything is bigger in Texas. We had a bayou on the edge of our back yard, so EVERYBODY I'm the neighborhood had roaches, and everybody had a monthly standing appointment with the exterminator to keep the filthy beasts at bay.

EXCEPT..

The house my parents had bought had stood vacant for several months. And, the previous owner, being a cheap bastard, had cancelled the extermination service a few months before he moved out. Why the realtor had not dealt with this problem is a mystery to me, except the house WAS marketed as a "fixer-upper".

Anyway, it was the first time I'd had my own room. Being five, and in a new home, I woke up and got scared because I didn't know where I was. I heard low voices and saw light coming from down the hall, so I ventured out towards the safety of my parents' loving arms.

Halfway down the hall, I stepped on a roach in the dark with my bare foot. Now, you can imagine how many roaches there had to be, for a tiny child's tiny foot to randomly find one in the dark. I was light enough that stepping on the roach didn't even kill it. I csn remember it so vividly, how it squirmed beneath my right foot, trying to escape. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was bad; I SCREAMED like the furies were after me, and launched myself into my parents' room, gibberish in terror.

After that, I'd find roaches everywhere. I'd open a drawer to get a spoon and they'd skitter away---and I had to EAT with that spoon. I'd grab a towel to dry myself off, and a big grandaddy roach would drop out of it---and I had to dry my tiny precious naked body with that towel. They were always on the periphery, waiting to pounce, even after multiple visits from the exterminator. I remember the bug poison had a bubblegum scent, but Mom always opened up all the windiws and made us wait outside for an hour after the exterminator left, and the scent was gone.

I have many lovely, vivid memories of Texas. My brother, riding his bike through a puddle during a rainstorm, and silhouetted by a huge lightning strike. Millions of tiny, brilliantly green frogs crowding into our garage and singing their songs during a flood. Watching a fireplace log rocket by in the street outside our house during the same flood. Golden koi fish, bright as jewels, swimming in the pond in our back yard once my dad cleaned it out, and being allowed to swim in the pond with them. My brother running over a diamondback snake with his bike, screaming "HAAIIIYAAA" and thereby saving our dog (and myself!). Learning to fish on a lazy day with my mother in the bayou behind our house with a cane pole, and catching my first fish, a catfish. But all that pales in comparison to my most lasting impression, a horrid wriggling and squirming beneath a tiny foot. TO THIS DAY, I don't like having my feet touched, nor do I like touching the feet of others. And I have a tremendous horror and fear of roaches, even though I know they can't hurt me. I could never, ever, just casually swipe them away like this lady does. The horror . The horror.

One night, there was a terrible scream, and many great crashes and thumps. Turns out, some breeds of roaches CAN FLY. AND DO. A whopping great roach had flown straight at my father's face, bypassed his windmilling arms, and landed on his bare back. The crashing was him running around the room, screaming "GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF", while my mother chased him around, beating at this giant roach with a rolled up newspaper. Silly woman, you can't kill a Texas roach that way!!! That only makes them mad.

After that, my dad applied for a transfer from his job, and got it, and we were packed up and on the road for Virginia within a month. Fortunately it was winter, and we had a basement in our new home. My mom had the movers put all the boxes in the basement and nuked them with bug bombs for three days, and they spent three cold and snowy nights down there without any heat while we stayed in a hotel. None of the roaches survived the trip to Virginia, although several had tried---we found a few hitchers in the boxes, flat and dead, more likely from the cold rather than the poison---they were mostly immune to that. Anyway, that is why I hate hate HATE fucking roaches.

Machismo (zerglingman@freespeechextremist.com)'s status on Monday, 01-Jan-2024 01:23:55 JST

Machismo

in reply to

@Grandtheftautism @PNS @swamphox NAS is a mastodon, they'd need to mod it or swap to a fork to fix their character limit lol

Hombre Lego Mexicano (grandtheftautism@freespeechextremist.com)'s status on Monday, 01-Jan-2024 01:23:56 JST

Hombre Lego Mexicano

in reply to

swamp fox

@swamphox @PNS different instances have different character limits. fse has a very generous character limit. speak to your instance owner about raising your instance's limits if larger character allowances interest you.

This is my thing, I write short stories or sometimes make very long posts and post them on fse. The generous character limit allows me to do this, one of the benefits in posting on fse.

Hombre Lego Mexicano (grandtheftautism@freespeechextremist.com)'s status on Monday, 01-Jan-2024 01:27:48 JST

Hombre Lego Mexicano

in reply to

@Zerglingman @PNS @swamphox lol too bad, so sad

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