Mr. Chang and the Cockroach

By Susan Lester

The following is a story I wrote for the amusement of my ESOL class when they were trying to use the past-progressive tense and -ing verbs. They enjoyed it, so I’m passing it on.

Mr. Chang was eating dinner in his Florida home when a cockroach slipped under the door, entered the house, climbed up the leg of the table, and walked through Mr. Chang’s plate of food.

Mr. Chang wanted his wife to see how arrogant and fearless the cockroach was, so he called her. She was preparing Tofu in the kitchen and did not care about the roach. “I’m busy,” she said.

Mr. Chang decided to kill the roach, but the fly-swatter was hanging on a nail in the kitchen, and he thought the roach would walk away before he could get the fly-swatter and return.

A little book was leaning against the salt shaker, so he grabbed the book and pressed it on top of the cockroach. He squashed it against the table. Just as he was squashing the cockroach, his daughter entered the room. She smelled the squashed roach and said, “I was going to read that book for school. Now I will just return it to the library.

“I’m very sorry,” said her father, “but I will use any weapon against a cockroach!”