Continuing the Story... Guns and Bugs

Knocked off my Pedestal

Chapter 3: Guns

On the day my kids were born, I kissed their foreheads and vowed to protect them.  Feeling strong that day (I am a triathlete after all), I promised to shield them from anything.  But on the day I learned what goes on in the lot across the street from my kid’s elementary school, I felt anything but strength.  I felt helpless.  

“There was another shooting where we live,” I blurted out to a friend.

Strong mom or not, I cannot stop a bullet.  And when you can’t afford to send your kids to a private school, you are at the mercy of your neighborhood. 

Ignoring the shooting and its heavy residue in my neighborhood for weeks already, the emotional effects of raw violence wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.  Yet, that’s what living between the walls of apartment 287 has done - forced me to recognize, discuss, and now write about systemic issues, cultural divides and the challenges and needs of those with no or little voice, especially our children.  Despite my discomfort, I continued speaking to my friend about gun violence.   

“I can’t believe there have been two shootings on my block since moving in,” I said, embarrassed to raise a dark issue occurring in my neighborhood, but not hers.  I knew these difficult conversations - between people from contrasting neighborhoods - needed to take place.  She and I may live in two different worlds, but the city in our postal address is the same.   

A lifetime resident of the area, my friend turned away from her work.  Taking a deep breath, she slowly explained what she knew about my neighborhood: “I’ve lived here my whole life, Annette.  Your corner - that plaza where the man was shot last week - is where all the gangs hang out; it’s been that way for years.  They eat, drink, and do whatever it is they do, all right there.  I never go there and locals avoid it for that reason.”

“That's the corner my kids’ school is on.  My God, I drive by there every morning and every afternoon. And all those kids - walking to and from school - unattended.”  Tears welled up in my eyes, and as I looked away, defeat filled my strong mom bones.

To think five years before this moment, my family was tucked away on top of a hill in a beautiful neighborhood in Upstate, New York.  From the quiet street I used to run down with my kids, I never would have guessed in 2019, I’d be fighting penetrating fears - of drugs, hate and violence - on my street and in my soul.

I wanted to talk about the issues I saw from the windows of my apartment, but I was out of practice in doing so with someone not facing the same issues.  For the last thirty-four years of my life, I was the one from the quaint neighborhood.  Before apartment 287, my husband, kids and I spent years living in a retreat-like private residence with few cars driving by.  Afternoons were spent riding a four-wheeler or fishing in our pond.  Now, I’m awkwardly discussing my neighborhood’s violence and for the first time in my life, truly understanding why more people are not openly discussing their neighborhood’s violence - its un undesired admission to the socioeconomic and cultural divide silently hanging out between two people from two different worlds.  This divide was difficult to comprehend until I was living in another part of town, you know, the “other side of the tracks.”  

Who wants to admit their side of town’s darker realities to someone from the light?

I believe what separates us from one another, even in the same city - differences in appearance, personal finances, education, habits, language, and beliefs - can be overcome.  But divisions can rear their ugly heads out of nowhere - and if we are not ready for it and aren't already talking about how to overcome them, they’ll keep us further from solutions that bind us.  

Case in point:  I was at a cocktail party not long after we first moved here (already feeling like a misfit) and when I answered someone’s question about where I live, an unnamed person cut into the conversation to explain, “Annette doesn’t live in the real Winter Park; she says she does and her address might say it, but she is not a Winter Park person”  (despite all his charm, I didn’t spend much more time with this business executive).  I realize now, how shortsighted this divisive comment was and how it fed into a painful divide both parties know is already there, but one party has the power to control.  

It was just a comment.

It wasn’t a neighborhood brawl and there were no gunshots.

Yet it screamed to further an ongoing divide in humanity causing pain, gridlock, and deep lack of empowered citizens.  It was said right in front of me, but I wasn’t ready or equipped to nix it.  Seamlessly threaded into a conversation at a cocktail party, no one, including me, had enough audacity to respond to its inappropriateness.  Instead, we all chuckled.  

At the forefront of this movement to openly discuss our differences and vulnerabilities, Dr. Brene Brown, a renowned researcher and storyteller tells in her famous TedTalk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” we are the “most in debt, obese, addicted population in history.”  We can credit a lot of that to numbing our vulnerability with our drive towards perfection.   And our only way out of our issues is to allow “ourselves to be seen, deeply seen.”  We are missing opportunities for deep connection, growth, love and belonging by putting up a front and out of pride, refusing to openly and vulnerably exist with one another.  You know what she’s talking about right?   

We are covering shit up. 

Living in this apartment complex, without an invested company managing it until recently, has not been sexy.  I have battled with feelings of wanting to cover shit up in a community where I’m surrounded by people with money dripping out their pores.  While I’m trying to bring sexy back (Justin Timberlake is probably going to read my book), there wasn’t even paint on our apartment walls for the first four and a half years of living here.  Our apartment may have slightly resembled a morgue.  There were good reasons people asked if their car was safe in our parking lot.  I promise not to bend away from my family’s reality the last several years, despite wanting to sometimes pretend these things didn’t happen.  With Brene Brown urging us to open up and authentically exist in space with another human - tears, guilt, anger, and hurt on the table - that is what I’m going to do. 

And beyond the obvious vulnerability of my family, lies a more hidden one - the vulnerability of the people in the stories I tell.  Some contain delicate topics and each one has been bathed in prayer.  Would you read their stories prayerfully, continuing the chain of love around them?  If we are to love better, take back our imagination of what could be, and open a space for the divine to come rushing in, then I tell these stories hoping they lead to action - from you, your neighborhood, your swimming group (mine is really cool so feel free to come join us), your church, your family, or your pet (more on that later).

As proven at that cocktail party, it is easy to roll up our window and ignore what goes on a few streets over and divide ourselves - by the communities we live in, the beliefs we hold, the color of our skin, or the size of our paycheck.  However, in humanity’s quest to end the violence between us and protect the children surrounding us, more attention needs to be paid to the similarities we hold, the values we share, and the challenges we all face, no matter who we are. Believing the only people worth paying attention to - as the Once-ler and the Lorax would say - are those with plans of “biggering and biggering and biggering,” is essentially losing sight of what it means to be a loving human. 

These stories from my neighborhood are about being forced to get smaller and how going smaller opened my family up to a series of deep connections, heightened awareness about our community, and an increased capacity to love our neighbors.  Noticing the little stuff - the ties binding us all together - opens space for you and me to act upon God’s most glorious and impactful moments instead of watching them flutter by, and builds bridges over the divide currently growing wider in our communities and country.

Chapter 4: Bugs

In 2016, a young girl and her family produced a YouTube video in Tulsa, Oklahoma about her home-grown insect collection.  Though small and quiet, the insect she collects leaves full-grown adults screaming, crying and perilously ascending the nearest piece of home furniture.  Casually storing dozens of insect-filled containers in her bedroom, she giggles and smiles as these half-inch insects – cockroaches - crawl up and down her arms, into her bed, and onto her clothing and hair.

Friends, this viral video perfectly illustrates and sets the tone for how I responded to our first cockroach infestation here in the apartment.  For days after witnessing roaches in my kitchen, it was nothing but smiles and giggles around here.  I gently collected those adorable, black and brown insects into my small-sized Glad and Tupperware containers to store them on my bedroom dresser – all to view their crunchy, little bodies in closer detail.  Not to be outdone in my love for roaches, I too produced a YouTube video of me petting my new friends before bed every night.  I know, I know, you’ve probably only heard about the negative attributes of these bugs – carrying contagious diseases or leaving black scat on the insides of your cabinets or walls, but I never once lost my composure over these critters because my love for them far outweighed any negative attribute.

I should probably warn you, however,  if you ask my husband or children how I reacted to roaches crawling in our apartment, they might try to tell you I had some drawn-out, overly dramatic, horrifically emotional reaction, putting everyone on edge and leaving the apartment complex staff cursing my name.

The truth is, they’d be right.

Within our family unit, I’m notorious for making a son, daughter or husband quietly reading or relaxing on the couch, get up and take care of a mess he or she made.  My family’s been blessed with a mom proudly serving her home as the “task-master.”  In return, Mom’s otherwise dull life is blessed with load groans, eyes rolling very far back into the head, and sloth-like movement across the floor towards any mess she refuses to clean up for them. 

So, a cockroach infestation? 

Not in this home! 

At the beginning, I was confused about where they were coming from. Like any good daughter of a former United States Marine, I did some late-night recon.  After everyone went to bed including myself, I got back up and slowly proceeded down the quiet, dark hallway towards the kitchen.  At 11:03 pm, I bravely swung my arm around the pink kitchen wall and flipped on the lights.  There they were, ten or so of them, - crawling on my kitchen counter like they owned the place.  Little did they know, the party was over:  I had picked up a can of Raid from our utility closet on my way down the hallway (Raid is a bug killer for those of you who have never had the luxury of using it).  Those bugs didn’t have a clue as to what was coming.  In my light blue bathrobe, furry slippers and messy, red hair, I aimed, sprayed, and cussed like a drunken sailor on a full moon night.  With blood surging through my angry veins and Raid everywhere, my recon mission ended successfully – I saw where they were coming from.  These disgusting bugs were squeezing their creepy little bodies through the electrical sockets on a wall we shared with the neighbors next door (more on the neighbors later).  

The war-like scene with half-inch bugs extended well into the night.  However, the sun eventually decided to rise and so the messy hair was tamely put back in place and the furry slippers were returned to the shoe rack.  My warm cup of coffee quietly promised me a new day was on the way and it was time to move on.  So, I did:  I moved right on down to the apartment complex management office (in hindsight, I probably should have kept the furry slippers on for this).

Explaining to the management we had a cockroach issue, I kindly requested pest control right away.  Not overly enthused about helping me deal with my new friends, she noted my request saying they’d give me a call about when pest control would be stopping by – several days from then – because that is the only day bug control comes.

Several days? 

The news these things were with us for several more days could be met with acceptance and patience by some humans, like my husband.  But he didn’t marry someone like himself.  So, this infestation kicked off a long string of sleepless nights because all I saw when I shut my eyes, were those filthy bugs joining forces to flank my Duct-taped fridge (I’ll do anything to keep my peanut butter safe) and mock my freshly cleaned counters.   

Five days later, the pest control company arrived and lucky for me – not him – I was in the apartment.  From my perspective, here is what happened:  Out of the big, black, tool bag hanging over his broad shoulders, a small, red, plastic “puffer,” appeared.  As he put the tool bag down on our floor (to which I responded, “Watch where you set that down buddy, or some of my new friends will gladly go home with you.”), I noticed his little red tool slightly resembled the snot sucker I used to clear the nasal passages of my children when they were infants.  To be honest, I may have been staring.  He watched me, watching him, as he walked into my son’s room with his little red puffer - and he puffed a few clouds of insect control behind my son’s dresser.  He left my son’s room and I followed him into the living room where I watched him raise his puffer to about hip level, bend over our television stand, and again, puff three clouds of insect control down on the carpet.  

“That’s it?” I asked.  

“That should take care of your roaches ma’am,” he responded.  Then he left.

A few days later - still on no sleep - I realized that man and his puffer did not have our bugs under control, nor did that young man give a crap about whether my infestation was handled. 

That’s when it hit me:  in apartment living, there is no direct line between me and the bug man’s little, red puffer – other than odd, evil stares, and my snappy questions.

I have no say.  I don’t hand the guy a check.  I don’t make the appointment.  Nor was I even asked about what was going on inside my walls, cupboards or fridge.  In this poorly managed apartment complex, advocating for my family’s health and safety had complicated lines drawn through it.  At the mercy of what the manager told the bug company and what the bug company told the apartment complex, I lacked one of my very favorite things:  control.

At this point, I was desperate for sleep, peace, and the end of feeling violated and dirty.  I began seeing cockroaches on my counter during the day, crawling across my kitchen floor while I was in the kitchen, hiding under sponges I went to grab, and behind magnets on my fridge. I abhorred my kitchen and frankly, wanted nothing to do with our apartment.  On my hands and knees, or standing tall on my tippy toes, I cleaned, cleaned and then cleaned again (I admit I killed a lot too), but they wouldn’t stop coming.  My hands became red and blistery from the bleach and one Friday morning, I was so tired, I accidentally served Raid to my kids for breakfast (What do you think?  Am I joking?  Maybe just ask the kids). 

In a spillover of emotions, I called my Dad.  As I waited for the corner light to turn from red to green, these were the words I desperately yelled from inside my car, which eventually turned into a pathetic sob: “This isn’t me!  I don’t get cockroaches!  I’m a clean person, Dad.  I can’t even look my friends in the eyes right now.  I’m ashamed of what I’m dealing with.  I hate living like this.”  The sharp turn my life took, from living on London Lane to renting behind the liquor store, was eating up all the pride, expectations, and assumptions my life was once based on.  The patterns and habits that robustly took me to a house on the hill were framed in winning, gaining, achieving, overcoming, creating and building.

At that stoplight, I confessed to new, foreign feelings - of defeat and being “lesser” than those around me. 

And there it was.  My circumstances were dictating my esteem.

In the middle of a conversation in which I had called my father out of feeling sorry for myself, I woke up and realized my anger and embarrassment over the roaches was fueled by a psychological and emotional tension between a painful stereotype of who gets cockroaches and who I thought myself to be.  The shame piercing my strong and persevering personality was built on the same severely negative stereotype many Americans have towards head lice, bedbugs, and an assortment of other household plagues.  Though these difficult-to-get-rid-of disturbances hit many American rental units and homes, no one wants to admit, talk about, or acknowledge these can happen to anyone - even them. 

Digging deep – through journaling and long talks with Barrett – I processed the feelings of shame like a clerk overseeing hundreds of manila folders in a tall filing cabinet.  Upon weeks and months of examining the indignity and anger I felt, the ordeal slowly planted an empathetic seed of understanding and humility in my heart.  From my experience, I filed away a lot of understanding.

Ever wonder why someone won’t make eye contact, speak up, or speak out?

Check out their circumstances before a judgment is made. 

Humiliation, something we’ve all felt at one time or another, is felt only when a human senses he or she is being pushed to a “lower position in one's own eyes or others' eyes." [1] So, to feel humiliated, I must have believed I was at one particular position/level in society -  and that position I believed I was in, was several steps above “cockroach infestation.”  Those cockroaches unveiled a deep stereotype I carried in my head - only dirty people acquire bugs.

I began playing out the same scenario of a kitchen full of roaches, but as a single parent with three kids under the age of eight, an hourly wage job, and a chronic illness beating on their door every night.  From my humiliation, compassion and curiosity began to grow.  I certainly wasn’t the only person in America dealing with cockroaches.  In 2017, there were 24,000 pest control businesses in the United States and together, generated $12.3 billion in revenue[2]. Yet, in this predicament, I carried business management skills, a college and graduate-level education, a solid upbringing, newer vehicles, resort vacations, and so many other things packed into my life before the dreaded roaches decided to move in. 

So yes, I had cockroaches. 

But do you know what else I had?  The ability to get the main office to take care of them the right way.

After realizing the snot sucker, puffer-blaster insect man did jack crap to alleviate the infestation we were facing, I marched down to the apartment office a second time.  This time, however, was different than the first, much different. 

I swung the front doors of the apartment offices open (allowing my bright red Wonder Woman cape, tied around my neck, to flap in the wind for a few star-struck moments) and when the young lady sitting at the desk asked if she could help me, I put my hand on my lasso, shook my head, and answered, “Nope.  You cannot.  I need your manager.” 

She got it. 

“My manager should be back soon; she was showing an apartment to a new tenant.”

Five minutes later, as the manager walked in, I immediately introduced myself: “Hi, my name is Annette Snedaker. I am a college-educated, seminary graduate, mom of three and a clean freak.  I have cockroaches in my apartment, which I was told would be taken care of.  They have not been taken care of.  And, quite frankly, now I’m pissed. I’m now ready and willing to do whatever it takes – to get those damn bugs out of my apartment… have you ever lived with cockroaches crawling through your electrical sockets, in your fridge, across your counter, and in your cupboards?” 

“Ma’am, I understand your frustration…”  

I cut her off. 

“No, you don’t.  Don’t talk to me like I don’t understand.  If you understood, you’d be on the phone right now with the pest control company.  And I’m pretty much demanding that you do that.  Right now.  I’m not going to live like this for another day.” 

Just as quickly as those words blasted out of my mouth, a part of me recoiled.  Deep down, I knew all too well I said what I said and demanded what I demanded because we never had a late payment, had awesome credit (despite the huge debt and income loss from the business) and came with the ability to move to a different complex.

The power was on my side. 

And I knew it. 

And I applied it.

That ability to confront a system or even an apartment complex manager was a developed behavior.  Through years of involved parents, life-long luxuries, a strong education, and athletics, I learned and grew comfortable with the ability to speak up and stand up for myself.  I know this now because I see the same level of confidence lacking in the voice and life of women surrounding me here in the complex.  Those life resources so many of us take for granted, gave me the necessary strength to go into a fight over my rental unit and the health of my family.  

  

Would I have risked demanding increased attention to our pest problem if I was late on my rent a time or two?

Would I have felt so determined if I didn’t drive a Buick Enclave SUV and my husband wasn’t a software engineer at a large tech company?

What if living in this place was the only choice I had in life? – would I have pushed the manager into helping me?

I’m not a single parent with no extra time on my hands. 

There were no screaming or exhausted kids with me. 

I speak English.

The list goes on, of why I felt comfortable addressing the issue and pressing management.

And so, when a stereotype - about what type of person gets cockroaches - fills my head, I need to remember I was once one.  Any subconscious held notions I was “above” or untouchable to life’s nastier side of bugs, dirt, or unkempt neighbors was met with cockroach scat, a can of Raid, and Duct tape across my light sockets.         

But since then, I wonder…

How many others in this complex – or any other rental unit across America - are living with bugs, but feel they can’t speak up about it? 

What about the parent who can’t meet the bug guy at the door to demand a certain level of work be done in their apartment because they have to be at work – or they lose wages - because they earn their paycheck hourly? 

What if a family is told they must pay for bug removal and truly cannot afford it? 

Do they keep living with the bugs?

Have you ever known anyone with bugs? 

What have you thought or assumed about them?

Was there space for grace?

If you knew me two years ago, would you have guessed I was sleeping with a can of Raid and went months without having guests, but embarrassed to tell you about it?

The infestation of a bug I have come to abhor taught me a few things: 

First off, a cockroach infestation won’t kill me – or you.  Go ahead and climb up on the chair if it makes you feel better.  But know this dirty, difficult phase passes. 

Second, I’m totally vulnerable.  Maybe the word vulnerable makes you cringe because, in your head, you see a little boy or girl crying over a lost turn on the playground slide – and that is not you.  Vulnerability is about more than a lost turn.  It is an acknowledgment of our susceptibility to the everything and anything that can happen on any given day - heartbreaking car accidents, regret in friendships, financial set-backs, chronic or acute sickness, knee and back injuries, relationship misfires, unexpected job loss, or that kind of deep sorrow that simmers on low heat way deep down in your heart - for years.  Things that feel like a hard blow to the perception we have of ourselves - can happen - and gnaw away on the pride we carry.  

Seven years ago, on a Tuesday afternoon, a colleague arrived at our coffeehouse meeting stressed and tired. For three weeks, she had been battling squirrels in her attic.  Doing reprehensible damage to her roof, chimney, and attic floor, I can still recall her saying, “It’s costing me thousands to get it fixed, but the worst feeling is knowing they were up there doing it when I wasn’t aware.  I feel like I was violated in my own home.” 

In the need to keep our homes (lives) impenetrable, we are sealing off more than rodents and bugs - we are sealing ourselves off from vulnerability, which often tends to seal us off from seeing how alike we are to a stranger, even one who is poor and fighting “pests” you nor I can see. 

I can’t control everything, I won’t always win the race, and sometimes bugs will win.  But a stranger becomes less of a stranger when I humbly realize how alike our lives truly are, how susceptible we both are to heartache, stress, and that endless drive to be perfect (which, by the way, isn’t real).  We live in a time when our education, homes, jobs, boats, clothes, fences, and hobbies can keep us blind to each other’s hurt, joy, and thick past.  But if we admit our defeats, show our scars (come on, we all have them), and talk about how we earned them, we could actually bond to one another instead of constantly trying to rise above one another.  

If we did that, my friends, imagine what we could accomplish together. 

Peace,

Annette

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[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humiliate

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-america-roach-rats-infected-cities/