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Roommate problems? I'll tell you about roommate problems
Sooo, you think you have roommate troubles?
For better or worse, a significant part of college life is adjusting
to dorm or apartment life.
There are basically two kinds of organisms that have to be dealt
with in a dwelling. Both can be found in the newspaper or mentioned
by friends. Sometimes, when you’re the added renter, they
are already occupying the room or the apartment.
If this is the case, it’s usually a good bet that you’re
being watched by the current inhabitants for signs of future behavior.
Generally, they are most concerned with how disgusting you’ll
leave their kitchen and who’s responsible for cleaning it
up. They never really ask if you’re clean or not, but be certain
they’re wondering.
Enough about roaches.
The second scourge of the home is the filthy, creepy, dark and difficult
human vermin commonly known as the “roommate from hell.”
This particular type of beast exists in every student’s life
at one time or another and is always terrific conversation fodder
on those occasional bad days. Many a whiny complaint session contains
the phrase, “…and to top it all off, my roommate keeps…”
We’ve all heard or even experienced the other possible endings
to this phrase. If the lodging involves women, the gripe often ends
with something like “…leaving hair in the sink”
or “…hogging the phone” or, the ever popular cat-fight
instigator, “…borrowing my stuff.”
It has been my observation that female roommates from hell seem
to be worse than males. Of course this could also be due to women
having a lower tolerance for deviant roommate behavior and/or relishing
the opportunity to yap about it.
There’s also a most puzzling characteristic about girls’
rotten roomies. When you meet them, often with prior warning, they
turn out to be some of the nicest people you’ve ever met.
Later, your friend insists that her roommate is never that nice.
It must have been the moon or something.
Guys, on the other hand, are really quite tolerant of whatever minor
differences, if any, there may be.
First, guys don’t borrow clothes from each other. After at
least 12 roommates over the years, no one has ever asked me, “Frank,
I just don’t have anything to wear, may I borrow your T-shirt
and that cool pair of dirty gym socks that go so well with my sweat-stained
sneakers?
In addition, phone usage and bathroom cleanliness are usually pretty
low on the scale of importance – often just above dusting
the light bulbs.
As for the phone, who cares? They’ll call back if it’s
important, right?
So basically, there are only two extremes to males living together:
tolerable and intolerable.
Everything from marginally annoying peccadillos to fairly major
personality disorders are sort of lumped into the tolerable category.
Actually, I wasn’t even certain that totally unacceptable
behavior existed in a male multi-habitation environment. Wrong,
very wrong.
This summer, my roommate, who leased our house and thus assumed
the responsibility of obtaining renters, was so distressed at the
possibility of rent concentration that he threatened to take to
the streets in search of our fourth roommate.
“How bad could it be?” we thought. An engineering major?
Education? Or, heaven forbid, another philosophy wacko? Would that
we had been so lucky.
Jerry was dropped off in our yard that afternoon, drunk, dirty and
stinking, with a small suitcase containing all his belongings. He
was nice – greasy nice – with an ear to ear smile that
never disappeared.
“He’s cool,” my roommate said. “I found
him at a construction site. He has a job and everything.”
Jerry’s job lasted about another week, making him late with
rent money. We let it slide. Jerry was cool. After a week, Jerry
mentioned that a while back he did three years in the “big
house,” and asked if we minded. Well, justice was served –
and Jerry was still cool.
Soon Jerry began bringing some unsavory individuals over to drink
beer. Since I’ve been the unsavory character myself before,
we decided to say nothing. By the end of the month, my roommates
and I discovered we were missing an electric drill, a VCR, a gold
watch and a new 10-speed, not to mention the rent money. In addition,
Jerry’s room had evidence of crack cocaine usage.
We decided this was a little more than we could tolerate, even though
he rinsed his dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, and
emptied the trash on Fridays. Jerry was history. He didn’t
come back that afternoon and his suitcase was gone.
Three college students learned a great deal this summer without
even going to a class. And when we get another roommate, I don’t
think his major is going to be quite so important. We’ll even
lend him our dirty socks if they match his shoes.
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