My First Love, the Roach Motel
Today, I would like to talk about a story from my childhood involving the Roach Motel, which feels appropriate for a season where the early summer air invites long rains.
It is a faint memory, like a first love that I encountered when I was old enough to understand the world, but from which my heart eventually drifted away.
To be sure, I asked my eight-year-old nephew if he knew what a Roach Motel was, but he talked about Pokémon instead, so I interpreted that as him not knowing, and I will briefly explain it to the guys of the Reiwa era.
People raised in snowy regions or abroad might be reading this, too.
The Roach Motel is a long-selling product primarily for catching cockroaches (hereinafter referred to as G) that Earth Corporation has been selling since 1973.
It is a stationary trap with a traditional longhouse design that lures Gs out with a scent that whets their appetite, and once they step into the longhouse, they are stuck to the adhesive sheet covering the floor, and it is all over.
Captured Gs can be disposed of in burnable trash along with the paper Roach Motel without ever touching them, and it is also considerate to pets since it does not use insecticidal ingredients; furthermore, if a sudden guest finds one, it looks humorously like a papercraft house at first glance.
It is the fruit of Earth Corporation's corporate efforts, having thoroughly researched the ecology of animals and humans.
If I were to explain it to guys from the Showa to Heisei eras, it would be easy to understand if I called it the Lupin method of diving into Fujiko-chan's bed with an aerial striptease.
Why my young self was attracted to this Roach Motel remains veiled in mystery.
It is not that I loved the smell of the attractant too much, nor that I wanted to be caught on the bumpy adhesive sheet, nor was I talked into it by a neighborhood lady saying, 'Try living in it, thinking you've been tricked! It's not bad at all!'
Perhaps the expression 'I was obsessed,' where I found myself following it with my eyes and being drawn to it, fits best.
Looking back at my childhood, I often watched my older sisters drawing.
My two sisters would fill their paper with drawings of 'me as a princess' wearing dresses adorned with many frills and my 'ideal castle'.
'The castle has 10 floors, 100 rooms, this is the treasure vault, this is the big dining hall...'
My sisters' ideal castles, full of desire with no vanity, shame, or building codes, had more rooms than they could ever use, and when they ran out of ideas for room distribution, they would mass-produce 'money rooms,' which had such poor security that even Lupin would probably just walk right past them.
While I clapped my hands and praised my sisters' drawings, which were based on a concept similar to the 'law that great hitters cannot hit slow balls as well as fast ones,' my heart was always quietly in the paper house placed in the corner of my grandmother's kitchen.
Surely, that flat, longhouse-style house of the Roach Motel was much more comfortable and wonderful than any mansion.
I have even been advised, 'If you like it that much, why don't you make something like a Roach Motel out of cardboard or something and go inside it alone?'
I have even been laughed at, 'Do you want to become a G and go inside? You'll just go in and die!'
I, too, do not want to become a G and make that my final resting place.
In the first place, that is a world where Gs live; even if it seems like they coexist with me, a human, they are different things, and it is physically impossible for me, a human, to enter it.
And yet, it is maddening, agonizing, and unforgettable.
The Roach Motel is like fine sea sand that spills from my palm no matter how many times I scoop it up, and disappears, blown away by the wind.
But no matter how much I give up, foolish me, I still look for it.
I look for the shadow of a Roach Motel in the gap between the refrigerator and the wall, or in the corner of the pantry where vegetables are stored.
And I have a dream that never ends.
I crawl on all fours into the Roach Motel, its seal broken from the green box.
First, I lie on my back, close my eyes, and feel you with my whole body.
Once we've completely settled in, why don't we forget about time and watch a movie?
And on a morning when we've overslept, I'll slap my knee and say, 'What am I doing?' and I'll be the one to brew the morning coffee that has become a daily routine.
Sometimes we'll open the roof to gaze at the starry sky, and on cold nights, we'll snuggle up behind the warm refrigerator.
Yes, why don't we just go on a trip together?
If it's just the two of us—the carefree, single me and the light, paper-made Roach Motel—we can go anywhere, can't we!
My young, earnest dream continued until it was eclipsed by the mischievous sense of adventure that accompanied the thrill, rather than the reassurance, of the 'garbage truck driver's hanging-off-the-side style is so cool!!' that came later.
Even now that I am an adult, when I go to a drugstore in this season as the rainy season approaches, I feel restless when I pass by the box of the Roach Motel, which remains popular, in the corner of the repellents lined up for promotion.
Even though it is a memory I have already passed by.
If I am ever asked in an interview, 'When was your first setback in life?'
'It was the physical helplessness I tasted in my childhood, realizing that no matter how much I struggled, I could never live in a Roach Motel—a limitation that cannot be overcome by effort or grit,' I will answer with great dignity.
Perhaps first love and the Roach Motel become beautiful memories and linger precisely because they never come true.
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