Edd vs the Roach (aka the Roach Suplex Story)

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I’m a man.

Society says I’m supposed to be tough and fearless. The king of the castle.

But it takes a real man to acknowledge defeat. And a few nights ago I experienced a defeat so crushing that most men would take the secret to their graves.

However, I’m not most men. Plus I have nothing else to blog about right now.

Allow me to relive the night I got manhandled by a roach.

As most of you know, the wifey and I celebrated seven years of martial bliss last week. Last Saturday evening, we took in a play and then experienced some fine dining at the nearest Red Lobster.

Before you culinary snobs start complaining about Red Lobster, hit the mute button. Red Lobster was the location of our first date so this trip had a bit of sentimental value.

Plus my parents gave me a gift card. I’m sentimental AND smart.

Anyway, after stuffing ourselves with 40 pounds of cheese biscuits (or as I call them, cheddary yeast-crack), we returned to the homestead. When we entered the house, the wifey froze and glared at the kitchen countertop.

“I think I saw a shadow,” she said. Me, ever the caring and compassionate husband, said, “Uh huh, OK.” I was too busy heading toward the DVD to pop in an episode of The Wire. A man has to have priorities.

“I think there is a roach under the ice tray,” she said. Apparently she noticed something scurry from beneath a potholder on the counter to an adjacent empty ice tray.

First, let me stop and address my sadiddy readers who probably are saying “ewww, y’all got roaches!?” Two things:

A: Stop fronting like YOU don’t have roaches. Y’all try to get cute, calling them palmatto bugs and waterbugs. Where I’m from, that’s a ROACH, homie.

B: We don’t “have” roaches, i.e., there aren’t little brown boogymen frolicking amongst our silverware at night. We live near a wooded area, which is home to some creepy, vile beasts.

No not that one. These aren’t as colorful. When we first moved in, these hideous outdoor roaches would slide in through the cracks of the patio door. Since then, we’ve improved the weather stripping around the doors and we’ve been mostly vermin-free.

But much like a new Rihanna single, every six months or so an unwanted visitor invades my comfort zone.

This was one of those nights.

So the wifey was freaked out about what might be lurking under the ice tray on the counter. It was odd because she’s pretty fearless when it comes to bugs. She gets it from her dad. I’ve seen her dad literally punch unwanted guests in their home.

And he’s squished bugs with his hands too.

But this time she was concerned. I went over to the counter and heard a loud scratching noise. It was like nails on a chalkboard. “That’s the roach,” she said.

Now how could a roach make a noise that sounded like a saber-toothed tiger filing its claws? I wasn’t buying it.

At this point, I was just annoyed. I hadn’t even seen this mystery intruder, but it was prohibiting me from watching my DVDs. So I swelled up with the spirit of Omar from The Wire and took action.

Omar has a shotgun, I had a, um, clothes hanger. My brilliant plan was to move the ice tray with the hanger, then BAM, send him to roach heaven.

I steadied myself, slowly moved the ice tray and BOOM! The biggest roach I’ve EVER seen ran from the tray and jumped on the floor. I mean this thing burst out like the Kool-Aid man knocking through walls. I think I heard it yell DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK! I’VE BEEN HERE FOR YEARS! And playa, the thing was huge, half the size of my TV remote! Black and ugly as ever!

Once Rick Ross Jr. leaped on the floor, he immediately started running toward me. That roach was a G, I think it was repping Blood gang. I stomped on it once, but since it was the size of a small foreign car, it had no effect. It kept coming. Again I stepped on it again; he kept coming. Another one; he kept coming. I was Kirk Franklin, hitting him with my best Stomp, but Roach Hogan was up on his Negro spirituals. He Shall Not Be Moved.

Finally, I reared back, summoning the might of 100 music critics and Internet journalists, and crushed Jean Claude Van Roach beneath my mighty Stacy Adams. The dragon had been slayed. But the momentum of that final stomp somehow caused me to fly backward into the dining room table, causing my spine to make sweet love with the hard edge of the table. I wound up flipping the entire thing completely over, knocking a hole in the wall. My deposit vanished like Ne-Yo’s hairline.

My beautiful wife shrieked in agony. Was it because the love of her life just engaged in battle of epic Game of Thrones proportions? No.

“MY MAC! YOU KNOCKED OVER MY MAC!”

This woman has seen her man fight for HER life against a monstrous beast and all she cared about was her laptop. This is why we can’t overcome as a people.

I laid on the floor with a huge bruise on my back that looked like a blob of grape jelly. I was gonna say it looked like a splash of grape Kool-Aid but that somehow seems racist.

Anyway, after I assured her that her real husband, Mr. Mac, was safe, she then says “MY ICE CREAM! MY ICE CREAM FELL OVER!” I had forgotten that we stopped by Chick-fil-A on the way home so she could get some ice cream. Only at Chick-fil-A can you get a cup of soft serve for the same price as a 20 gallon bucket of ice cream at the grocery store. But I digress. Her ice cream was fine: even though it fell over, it somehow didn’t leak out of the cup. It was a wedding anniversary miracle.

At least I knew where I stood in order of importance in our household:

1. Macbook
2. Chick-fil-A ice cream
3. Me
4. Ice tray

This can’t be life.

After I cleaned up the mess and googled around to price the Hoveround I’d now need, I get this last loving line from my beautiful wife on our anniversary:

“You got suplexed through a table by a roach.”

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Good lord.

The moral of this sad, sad story is …

I have no idea.

I need to do better.