Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Roommates of Christmas Past



While reflecting on my near-complete college career, I realized something: I have never had a bad roommate. I'm not sure how unique I am in this respect. When you go to college, people warn you about the kind of roommate who will have sex in your bed and throw parties while you're studying for finals or pee on the floor in your room (my junior year roommate's freshman roommate actually did this). You go to college anticipating that living with a stranger is going to be a nightmare of the grandest kind, but I, well, found the opposite to be true.

My first roommate I spent two years with because we were so fond of living with each other. She liked musicals, movies, and making origami cranes out of anything she could get her hands on. She also learned how to make origami penises at one point, much to the amusement of many. We would have late-night conversations on the regular. She's actually the whole reason I met my boyfriend of almost 3 years-- he was her friend and he hung out in our room a lot. After Sophomore year, we decided to part ways but we're still friendly when we see each other and do lunch on occasion.

Junior year, I moved in with a hipster girl who was quiet and nice but who I didn't think I'd hit it off with for that reason. We didn't talk much and she watched "The Office" a lot. After awhile, we got friendly and found we had common interests like lolcats, Lamebook, and Jersey Shore. We were totally the roomies who would send each other Facebook links from across the room and laugh, and even though we don't like together anymore we still bombard each other with pictures of cute animals and ridiculous hipster things. We also both took extreme pleasure in making fun of my boyfriend. We hang out on the regular and talk and I'm really glad that we became friends.

My roommate now is one I've only known for a few weeks, but she's wonderful so far even though I didn't get to pick her (basically, I was going to room with someone who decided not to return to Clark, so I was randomly assigned to a transfer student over the summer). She's a vegetarian-hippie-feminist with an adorable pixie cut and a dress collection to die for. So far, so good.

So I've never had a bad roommate. I've actually quite liked them. My boyfriend, Luke, on the other hand, has not been so lucky. A quick rundown:

Freshman year: jock who drunkenly slept with a girl while he was awake in his bed. The jock didn't know Luke was awake but assured the drunk girl that it was okay to do it while he was in the room. Ummm.... Luke never revealed to this roommate that he knew what happened.

Sophomore year: kid who liked Japan a little too much and wore a woman's wig that he was using for a cosplay once while having a conversation with us. His alarm would go off for a straight hour or so every morning before he would shut it off. He also wouldn't stop bragging about the fantasy novel he was writing or the one video game he and Luke both liked.

Junior year: guy we thought would be awesome 'cause he supposedly "lived" with his girlfriend. He spoke almost solely in questions (talking to him was like police interrogation), except for when he was saying random phrases at odd times. He would come in and say "Death of a Salesman!" or "Willie Loman!" for no reason and make random nonsense comments while doing work at his desk. He originally said he would never be in the room but ended up being there 99% of the time listening to loud rap music. Oh, and he had a subwoofer.

Senior year: as far as we can tell, this dude and his girlfriend sleep 20 hours a day and then loudly watch "Shrek" for the other four.


What about you? That's what I'm curious about. I want to hear some great and terrible roommate stories from you guys (they don't necessarily have to be college roommates). Spill it!


[Also, please continue to bear with me while I try to get my schedule under control. This semester is going to be last really difficult one and I have a lot on my plate. I'm going to try to still post regularly and visit your blogs, but just know I still love you even though I may be a little absent until sometime in December.]


6 comments:

amanda said...

I only lived in the dorms for one year, but I was lucky enough to have TWO roommates. One was -- in her words -- a "crusty punk". That is, she refused to shower regularly, and took great pride in revealing that she hadn't washed herself in almost a month. She had a 2 foot bright pink mohawk and an extensive collection of knives that she kept in the dorm. Needless to say, she was a horrible roommate. She either didn't have a computer, or didn't like working on her own, so she would spend hours upon hours on my and my other roomie's laptops. I'd come in from class to see her sitting in my bed, goofing off on my laptop multiple times. She refused to clean the bathroom or even corral her laundry. She was, in a word, nasty.

My other roommate was a delight. I hated her for the first few months, until I realized she was being such a bitch because she was deliberately trying to piss off our "crusty punk" roommate. We bonded and one weekend while the punk roommate was out of town, told the director of students that she was terrible to live with and we didn't feel comfortable living with her. Then we called the cops and had them confiscate her drugs and knives. She was kicked out of the dorms by the end of the semester. The good roommate and I have been best friends ever since.

This isn't a story about one of my roommates, but it's the funniest dorm story I've ever heard. A girl I knew from Hawaii had a terrible roommate who would invite her boyfriend to stay with her all the time. They would spend all day in the room, so who knew when they went to class. One day, the girl came back to her room to hear her roommate screaming through the locked door. She didn't want to walk in there and possibly get hurt saving her roommate, so she called to her through the door. The roommate just screamed louder. So the girl called campus security, telling them that she was worried her roommate was being harmed. They came and broke down the door in record time, only to find the roommate and the roommate's boyfriend having wild sex.

Jem said...

Having only been in college for a few short weeks I think that my roommate situation is coming along rather well. Especially since we don't speak the same language- I'm not fluent in sign language yet. Luckily, my room mate is really good at reading lips and I can understand her pretty well. We get along really well and have a lot of mutual friends too. :)

Hi, I'm Bec said...

When I moved into the place I'm in now I met one of my housemates Harry. He scratched his balls before shaking my hand and then proceeded to sing the chorus to a song that goes "fuck bitches, get money"
I presumed I was going to hate him but he's actually one of my favourite housemates.
Every time he sees me he greets me with "Morning beautiful" or "Hey gorgeous" or something else lovely. He looks after me whenever I over-drink, makes me laugh at all the silly things he says, motivates me to study and is always there to talk.
It really taught me to not judge people on first impressions.
And I've almost gotten used to waking up to "fuck bitches, get money" :)

Vanessa said...

Amanda: I really don't even know what to say. The word "crusty" was used in reference to a human being and I don't think I can possibly add anything. Also, the second story is completely mortifying. Paper thin walls!

Jem: Glad everything's going well for you so far! I bet you'll get a lot better at signing by living with someone who's fluent.

Bec: I thought this was actually kinda cute. I can think of a few people I know who are kinda like this: they come off really word and icky at first but turn out to be awesome. I wouldn't mind waking up to "fuck bitches, get money" in exchange for such a good friend.

Laells said...

My poor friend in college had a terrible roommate.

I used to go over and stay with her alll the time because she lived across the street from college and that beat a forty five minute bus drive from where I lived at the time.

Anyways the guy would walk around and record himself talking in his tape recorder, have random freakouts in his bedroom, and one time had a random freak attack right outside my friend's window. Which was really odd because outside her window was the front of the house and garden and big six foot hedges. One of those places where it's like, wtf are you even doing there in the first place let alone having a complete fit?

Other than that I've only really had to share a room with a sister and now I live with my boyfriend.

I was a live in nanny/friend with a woman who started out very nice and then turned nasty but I'm not sure if she counts. I dunno. Maybe. She used to wake me up a 3 in morning (when I had to be awake at five for school and she full well knew that) to get me to help her upload a picture to Facebook. I'm not talking about like once or twice. I showed that woman how to upload a photo to Facebook at least 100 times if not more. I'm not joking at all. It was ridiculous.

Laells said...

P.S. I just fell in love with Lamebook. :D

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