Hello, I am sure you have all heard horror stories about roommates, well, not
only have I heard some, but now I am able to offer a few of my own. My
particular roommate, David, is relatively familiar to me, especially since he
exhibits an eerie likeness to my father. They are both odd men, with the
social habits of a recluse, and the strange brilliance commonly exhibited by
anti-social school children, which one assumes is a result from all of their
time studying for pure entertainment as a product of their social isolation.
All of this being said, I must give my father more credit, because he does
have some understanding of people. This may be the outcome of many more years
of experience, than David has, but nevertheless he is much keener to “reading”
people, and I have a much greater respect and admiration for him. I have
stated their similarities for several reasons: one, to demonstrate that as an
avid student of human behaviour, I know David very well, because I have lived
with an older version of him all of my life in essence; two, I have both ways
of observing behaviour both my father and David exhibit others may not be
observant to; and finally, to demonstrate how I can overcome their nuisance
similar traits.
My first impressions of David over the phone, were as follows… He seems like a
tad bit of a nerd, but I have nothing against that, because I consider myself
a nerd as well for a good portion of my life. Also I thought him a tad too
talkative, and obsessive, but I thought at that point that it would be
something I should be able to live with. Then when I met him personally the
first time, I remember thinking that he looked particularly strange, actually
ugly to be perfectly frank. He also has this haircut that one must wonder
where he got the idea it would be a good idea to have one like that (something
to the effect of Nathan Van Dam’s seventh grade haircut). Aside from that, I
began to learn of his annoying traits very rapidly, and his stupid/immature
comments on minute details. Then we met again for the final time before we
moved into our dorm room, this time with our final roommate, Preston. I
brought my girlfriend, Abigail, and Preston brought his, Sophie. I learned
immediately just how much more I was going to like Preston, than David. Also
Abigail learned just how much she was going to hate David, she found him to be
totally irritating from the first day she met him.
After we moved in to our dorm together, things proceeded somewhat badly, but I
tried to keep an open mind to it. Now, in order to understand some of
my “sufferings” you must first understand what the room came with and our
division of the school’s provisions given us. We have three closets, two of
which are quite sizeable, seeing as they are built into the wall, the other,is simply shitty, it is brown, and is quite small, not even large enough to
put a laundry hamper in. We also have three desks, two of which, are right
handed, meaning that they have drawers on the right hand side of the desk, and
we have one left handed desk. We were given three chairs of course, one of
which was a nice one with a blue back, and the other two were a shitty brown.
One of the brown ones was missing a peg at the bottom of the chair; thus it
would rock from one corner to the opposite, when the slightest amount of
pressure was applied to it. Also we have a bathroom with our room (luckily),
and inside of the bathroom we have one medicine cabinet with three shelves.
The bottom shelf is simply the bottom of the cabinet, the two above that are
glass, but the middle one is significantly shorter than the other two. We
have a lot of other furniture, but I will not go into it so much as, it is not
relevant to the rest of the story. We have two windows, one of, which is
twice as large as the other is. Finally there is a tear in the carpet by the
smaller window, which stretches roughly five feet.
One might wonder how we decided to allocate all of our new resources. Well
the day we moved in, David had arrived there before I did, because he had had
orientation the day before, so naturally he took one of the larger closets,
because he claimed that he needed the room for his fencing gear. I, being the
next to arrive, took the other large closet, because almost my entire wardrobe
requires a hanger of some sort. When Preston arrived, he pleaded with me to
take the small shitty brown closet, so I did just to make peace and compromise
an immediate policy of the room. I also somehow ended up with the shitty
brown chair missing a peg. I got the left-handed desk (though I am, indeed,
not left-handed). I also got the middle shelf of the medicine cabinet (which
I never got to enjoy, because David took over my shelf with his shit). I took
the small window with the five-foot tear in the carpet. David was
disadvantaged in that he got the wall without a window by him, and Preston was
all out blessed, except for having the moderate shitty brown chair
(fortunately all of the pegs were present).
Now for the first story: as it happens we all bought lofts to place our beds
on, for those of you who do not know, a loft is a wooden frame roughly five
feet high, on which one places their bed. One can place such things as their
dresser and desk underneath it. I initially did so, and found it to be
undesirable, compared to another way which makes the desk like my miniature
office, and just placed my dresser underneath and my desk facing the opposite
way, so that I could see people coming into the room. Unfortunately, the way
my space was set up, having a left-handed desk, my drawers would have bumped
into the loft, and it would be unpractical and non-functional. So, seeing as
David was present I asked him to switch me desks, on which he persisted his
life, would not be the same, and he would die if he did not keep his nice
right-handed desk. He gave me every suggestion in the book of what to do,
just short of switching desks. He came up with nearly every lame excuse in
the world, on why he needed his desk et cetera. We argued about it for nearly
an hour, and finally I just said fuck it, and left, due to my frustration.
Finally, when I returned, I made him help me switch my whole set up, so that
basically my new set-up would mirror the original set up I wanted, but atleast it would function with a left-handed desk.
Now, for the second story: one day, David’s sister came to visit him, while I
was out, they were short of chairs, so she took mine to sit in. When I came
back, David’s chair was empty, so I took it, and brought it to my desk, I was
quite happy about this, because it meant that I got the best chair in the room
for once. The next day I was out, David made bloody sure he got his chair
back. This was somewhat irritating to me, as I did not want to be stuck with
all of the shitty things of the room. But, I did not complain, I just thought
it was quite underhanded of him, thinking of it even now, bothers me
immensely.
A different day my friend Aubrey and I were sitting in my room, before our
next class when we were the only ones in the room. I had mentioned to her how
I wanted the chair that David had, because as it was, my chair kept sliding
over the tear in the carpet and thus kept getting caught on it. I said how I
did not want to cause trouble, however, and would not do it myself. She took
that as a cue to switch chairs, which I was grateful to her for having done.
We thought of the dilemma that David would as he had before simply switch them
back, and thus we began to think of a plan to keep him from doing so. We took
some of my used underwear, two pairs to be exact, and placed them on the
chair, one on the seat and the other on the back.
We thought some more and felt this would not be sufficient to withhold David’s
greed, so we came up with anther plan. We decided the only real thing that
anyone in his right mind would never touch short of something like shit, or
vomit: is naturally a soiled condom. Well, we took a condom filled partly
with conditioner, and placed it on the chair so that it was over the handle
and that the mouth was right over the back or the chair. We thought it was
the funniest thing in the world, and we left for German, jesting that David
would still switch it around. After class I walked Aubrey back to her class
in the engineering building, which happened to be right by my dorm. After
dropping her off, I ran into David, David told me “That was disgusting!!”. I
said “What was?” Keeping an entirely straight face. He said no more of the
matter, seeing as he had to go to class.
When I returned to my dorm room, I noticed that I had my old shitty brown
chair back in its place. Although that fact alone very much upset me, I also
took notice that everything from the underwear to the condom itself was back
in the same place as when I had left, save that it was all now on my shitty
brown chair. Along with this, I found that he had taken back his good blue
chair, and placed his books on the seat, beneath his desk in hopes I would not
take it back again. I was infuriated that someone could be that mean, and
selfish. I called Abigail, because I simply had to speak with someone. I
told her about what had happened, and she told me to talk to my RA, so I did.
Fortunately my RA is a complete sweetheart and heard me out, I showed her the
situation. She told me that I could just have one of the extra chairs in her
room, I said I would later but it was the principle that upset me so much.
She understood, and said to get her after I confronted David.
I went back to the room and called Abigail again, and a few minutes later
David entered, while I was talking to her. I had taken back the good blue
chair, and gave him the shitty brown chair, and he yelled at me immediately
that I had his chair. I said to him “This is my chair now, if you do not like
yours you can see Vanessa (our RA), or call maintenance, but if you touch this
chair I will kick your ass!!” He said how he was disadvantaged compared to
Preston and I, because he did not get one of the windows, although that was
all he could make the case for. I said all of the shitty things I had, and
pointed out how I was sick of accommodating both of them and getting shat upon
in return. About that time Aubrey walked in, and heard everything.
We argued, and I got sick of it, and left with Aubrey, I again reiterated to
David that I would kick his ass if he switched them again. So we left and I
went to Vanessa’s room and fetched a better chair. We brought it back and
found David switching the chairs again, I was so pissed off I did not know
what to do. I yelled at him for being a complete selfish bastard, and told
him that I had this new chair, and he would no longer need to worry about it.
He apparently felt badly about what he did, so in a somewhat compromising
manner he said “Okay, fine, I will take the brown chair (but it was Preston’s
moderate brown chair).” Of course by this point I was so fed up with him, I
just told him something to the effect of that I no longer cared, I had found
the chair I wanted.
Aubrey and I left, and came back to find that David had his good blue chair
back, and Preston still had his shitty brown chair. I no longer cared much by
this point, but just the fact that he said he would taken Preston’s chair and
did not, bothered me immensely. Later he felt there may be some tension in
the room (very observant wasn’t he? [sarcasm]). We did end up having
a “family meeting”, the next day (September 11, 2001) after all the shit went
down on that tragic day. I told him I thought he was being an ass, and he
conceded that he had been, and we worked to make things better, but he still
sucks, make no mistake. There are other stories, but they shall hopefully be
written later.
I know that all of this stuff may seem petty to outsiders, and it does to me
as well, but I still think it is very amusing. I hope it brought you a few
laughs, if not, I hope you halfway liked it.