Waterbugs

I never thought much about waterbugs until a lot of people from other places started visiting me. Let's start with the fact that we call them waterbugs. Every New York native calls them that. One word: waterbugs. Growing up in New York, I actually thought that they were a different class of bug or something, like waterbugis hellabigidae or whatever, but when I looked them up I found out they're just giant cockroaches. The American Cockroach, to be more precise.

Clearly this water bug thing arose among New Yorkers in order to comfort ourselves that we had to deal with giant cockroaches. I had an exterminator come over to my house and I thought he would say something like, "Indeed, I see signs here of the American cockroach." But nope: "Yeah, you got the waterbugs." Even exterminators in New York are participating in the mass delusion! 

People visiting from other places who experience waterbugs flip out; they feel like their world has been turned upside down and the bottom has fallen out, because they are seeing an insect too big to be real. 

I'm not saying we love them, but we get used to the idea of them. We accept them. I think we should make them the New York mascot, as symbolic of the fact that you can get used to anything, and that we live here together in our tenuous peace, all kinds.