A computer filled with cockroaches is the catalyst for understanding the divide in American values

What's up? I'm a cockroach, and I'm gonna move into your house.

My career is not my writing. Part of what I do involves restoring and reissuing slightly dated computers to clients who may need them. This week I experienced something that I wasn't expecting, and it left me slightly horrified. A client returned a computer filled with live cockroaches.

Yep...those are roach casings. Nice eh? Are you afraid yet? Your computer
could be a regular old roach motel!

I didn't discover the find until a day later. And by then, they'd had a whole night to escape from inside the computer where they'd built their nest and run around my workplace laying eggs. It's truly grotesque, and we're having the whole building fumigated this weekend.

Upon first opening the computer to spray out the dust with compressed air, I didn't quite realize what I was looking at. The insides of computers are typically extremely dirty. Mine at home isn't because I clean it out to keep it well ventilated at least once a month. The interior of my computer is also well lit with neon, and I think that may bother and deter such creepy crawlies as cockroaches.

So there I was spraying and all of these empty brown beetle-like casings were flying everywhere. I picked up some with my fingers thinking "what is this?"

Then I saw them hiding beneath the motherboard. Small, flat, and very brown roaches with antenna wiggling at me as if to say "what's up?" and "stop spraying us with compressed air cause we're sleepy..."

I see this kind of condition all the time. It's grotesque. I don't know why
people let their machines get like this. It definitely impacts performance.
For the record this isn't the pc that had the roaches. Just one I grabbed
off the internet to show you how dirty pc's can become.

I threw the computer in the garbage. I'm not going to rip out all the guts of an older computer just to get at a cockroach nest and then deal with all the eggs. I'm sure the back of the motherboard is just covered with them and perhaps, the pc probably doesn't even work, as roaches eat the glue on electronics and love the heat generated by computers.

But I didn't act quickly enough.

This is what cockroach eggs look like. Seeing these gives me chills.

When I called the client and told her, "I found live cockroaches infesting the computer you returned to us," she said "Uh huh. So when I get another one?"

She wasn't even surprised.

I repeated, "Um, your computer is filled with cockroaches. I don't appreciate that. We're having to spray the entire building down now."

"So? What's the big deal."

That was my second "horrified" reaction this week. Ever since that conversation, I've been trying to figure out why someone wouldn't be phased by what I'd said. There's also the implication that she knew roaches might be living in it and it was okay to just leave it in my workplace in a torn plastic shopping bag (also covered in eggs on the inside). I wish I hadn't just left the pc for the next day's work load on a chair in our office.

Maybe it's because they live with them and aren't bothered by them. And it makes me realize, how different we are as people. What is offensive to one person is not only fine with another, there's absolutely no way you can explain to that person why you are offended. They simply don't get it, and they probably never will.

It made me see how useless debates are that take place between adults who don't share values. It's just going to be like two big-horned sheep slamming into each other on a mountain. They will never understand you. Ever. And you will always be at odds with that person because you just don't have the frame of mind to comprehend where they're coming from.

Two sets of values that will never ever see eye to eye on anything.

For me, a computer filled with cockroaches is the catalyst for understanding the divide in American values.

Interesting, eh?

And people...there is a moral to this story: Please please please clean your computers with compressed air. Take off the panel, stop being afraid of the inside, and just do it. But don't ever use a vacuum unless it's one made for doing that kind of work. A vacuum can cause static electricity to build on sensitive components and cause you many pains. Compressed air though is a safe bet. If you haven't done this in years, prepare to find spiders and bugs living inside. That's what you get for keeping a filthy pc in your home.

Have a great weekend.

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