Childhood friends
If I ever write a memoir it will contain cockroaches.
Because I’ve always associated this icky creature with my childhood. Roaches are everywhere in Argentina — they are the South American equivalent to Northern European mice. And if here anyone who sees a roach has a minor fit, no one down there thinks twice about the swarms of roaches that scatter in fear when you turn on the lights in a hitherto dark room. Open a drawer: roaches. Unmake your bed to get in: roaches. Start reading a book: sooner or later a flattened roach pretending to be a bookmark. Everywhere there’s a nook there’s a roach — roaches are ubiquitous and you end up getting used to them.
I fondly remember watching the roach races1 on the telly when I was nine or ten, on a show called La mañana de los niños (The Kids’ Morning).
Perhaps because of this show, having a pet roach was for a while a symbol of status among kids my age — roaches could get you on the telly, after all. I don’t know why I never joined in the fad of adopting a roach like so many of my peers. It might be that I had already been showing disdain for fashionable trends, or perhaps I simply never encountered a friendly cockroach.
In any case, when the cholera epidemic of 1991-1994 arrived at they stopped being our friends, it had been some time since I found them entertaining.
Facts
Here are five interesting facts about cockroaches. I can vouch for their veracity — I found them on the internet.