An unwelcome visitor in my NOLA apartment...

I think it's fun to share anecodotes from my days in Louisiana. This one will not be accompanied by photos, and you'll understand why shortly.

When I was a senior at Tulane, I moved into an apartment across the street that I shared with three other girls. (The address was 1022 Broadway, which gave me the chance to tell people I'd been "on Broadway," wink, wink.) In the middle of my first night in the apartment, I woke up with a start when I suddenly heard a rustling in my room. I flipped on the light, but no one was there. I was perplexed... and then I saw it. A giant roach was wandering around my desk. He was so big that he was actually making noise as he moved across the papers covering the top of my desk.

I screamed and swatted him into a drawer.

I did not open that drawer again until the day I graduated and moved out of the apartment. And there the poor guy was, on his back, legs up in the air, long expired. I still feel guilty about being such a coward. But if was him or me in that apartment. And I was the one paying rent!