Day #5: My Business of Roaches and Chocolate

My house had an infestation of cockroaches. Roaches under the sink, in my bags, under my seats and bed. Roaches everywhere. Big brown roaches. Small black roaches. Winged and wingless roaches. Healthy roaches and injured ones limping from surviving a hit from me. Roaches here and roaches there.

I’d be sleeping and I’d hear movements in the house as though someone was stealing something from a polythene bag. They’d climb the walls in the night and flap their wings as they flew down you’d think my house was theirs. They’d stay still if I woke up and moved around. If I was superstitious, I’d think some good for nothing bloke was bewitching me and sending spirits of roaches into my house.

I’d had enough. I was angry. That nonsense had to stop. I was the boss of my house and roaches had no place in it. So I went to the supermarket in my neighbourhood and bought Mortein Doom. The word “Doom” alone meant disaster for the roaches. I was ready to slay those roaches to threads.

The label on the can itself would cause any cockroach to run for dear life. They didn’t know what was about to happen. This was going to be the Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the world of roaches.

“All Insect Killer.”

“Nothing Kills Faster and Keeps Killing for Longer.”

Those words were written in caps on the can of doom.

This was war. Those cockroaches had no clue what their fate was about to be. I was going to shut them up forever.

I pop the can open and say the kind of words Samuel L Jackson uses in Pulp Fiction. I spray the life out of those roaches. My house was filled with doom. The roaches were doomed. They flew out of their hiding places, from all the crevices I didn’t know existed. But they were overpowered by doom. They didn’t make it. It was a massacre. It’s crazy that cockroaches die on their backs when sprayed with doom. That was one interesting observation I made as I swept out their corpses.

That was how I considered becoming an exterminator and starting an insect extermination business. But my first love has always been candy.

When I was 10, I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I wanted to be Willy Wonka so bad, man. I wanted to be the guy who owned the chocolate factory, that guy who controlled kid’s cravings for chocolate, the guy who’d have chocolate anytime he wanted. I thought about all the things I could do with chocolate. Make children happy, bring smiles to old people, draw cheers to everyone’s face. And when Willy Wonka handed over the factory to Charlie Bucket, I was so jealous, man. I wished it was me.

I imagined myself in Charlie’s position having all the chocolate I wanted and selling it to everyone else. I’d get everyone sugar high. I didn’t yet know the role of chocolates in relationships when people are in love. I didn’t understand the romantic gesture that chocolates carry. I didn’t yet know that chocolates could be used to apologize. That you can give a sick person a bar of chocolate as a sign of wishing them a quick recovery. I had no clue that chocolates could be sent as a thank you gift.

And for adults, at that point, I had no idea chocolate could be used to spice up one’s sex life.   One thing I knew for sure at that stage in my life was that chocolates mend friendships, cement relationships and make people happy. All I wanted to do was to light up the life of people using this sweet thing. I sold candy in 2013 but dropped the baton before the business picked up. I should probably get back to it knowing the significance of candy in the lives of people.