We all have our unique tastes in music. In fact, this very evening in the privacy of my own room, inclined by some strange school-induced suicidal mood, I started listening to My Chemical Romance. So yes, we all listen to music that may or may not match the taste of the ones with whom we live. This particular roommate, however, very much enjoyed listening to her music without headphones in shared spaces, and tried to convince you that you, too, enjoyed her music--particularly the tracks of the Icelandic nature. Bjork? Sigur Ros? What's wrong with those guys? No no. I literally mean Icelandic nature. What this particular roommate listened to were Icelandic soundscapes filled with chimes, and whistles, and the sound of whooshing winds and crunching snow, and it very much concerned me. The first several times she played it, I'll admit, I was intrigued. I thought, "how cool of this girl to not give a shit and listen to what she wants." This is until she played it every single night. She would listen to those tracks on loop for hours and hours on end, regardless of what she or I was doing , and it eventually became really uncomfortable to be around. Nevertheless, these songs--noises...whatever we want to call them--seemed to bring her so much peace and enjoyment that, because she was such a great roommate in every other sense, I never said a word. This one is on me.
That is the thing: I have always had the mentality that if something in my home irritates me, it's my problem not anyone else's.
Dirty floor bugging you, Stephanie? Clean the floor.
Dirty floor bugging you, Stephanie? Clean the floor.
Wine glasses aren't clear enough for you? Wash them yourself.
Want to make dinner but the only frying pan is locked in your roommates room? Go out and buy your own damn frying pan.
This roommate had a love--nay-an obsession with bacon. In the short time we lived together I don't think I ever saw her eating, or any evidence of her having eaten, anything besides bacon. About every three days she would fry up a 10lb bag of bacon and take it into her room, and this pan would not re-emerge for days. I don't know if she was sustaining herself over those several days with her enormous supply of bacon, or if she would eat it all in one sitting then let the pan fester. I have NO IDEA. All I know is that the pan went into her room with 10lbs of cooked bacon and would stay there for nearly seventy-two hours until it was hung back on the hook for however long it took until the next batch.
What happens behind closed doors is not my business. If roommate #2 wanted to shovel bacon in her gullet, that's her right! However, when roommates leave their doors open their actions become public. Those behaviors become a part of the collective living experience, so when another roommate that would invite over her boyfriend, leave her door open, then sit on the floor and make animal noises at him, it took everything I had not to record that shit and put it on youtube. Barking, oinking, meowing, and mooing that possibly started as a cute game eventually turned into some strange sort of foreplay for them, and just the sounds of a typical Wednesday for the rest of us.
Then, of course, there was the roommate that actually had an animal. This particular craigslist find was a self-employed, pot-smoking, ferret owner. Since I kept my bedroom and bathroom doors closed, having her little friend roaming around the house rarely bothered me. That is until the night she was leaving for Bonarroo. I was on a conference call, sitting in an arm chair next to the wifi router, piled below my laptop, my tablet, and a stack of sketches going over some designs with my professor when the roommate started carrying baskets down the stairs.
"I'm going to leave the door open!" she yelled, ignoring the fact that I was on the phone.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see her transporting things out of the house, a bushel of produce, a trunk of oversized costume props, a duffelbag of drug paraphernalia, etc. On her third or fourth trip down she stopped in the doorway: "Can you watch him for a minute?" she commanded while tossing her animal's leash over the back of my computer. Before I could even react she was out the door and I was on babysitting duty. Understandably, in her mind I was just sitting there, so I put the leash around my wrist and carried on with my meeting. For a few minutes everything was fine, then without warning the struggling at the other end of the leash stopped. Realizing instantly that the ferret had escaped his harness I leapt toward the open front door, dropping my computer, phone, and papers in the process.
"He's loose! Blank, he's off his leash!" I shrieked as I watched his little tail fade into the darkness outside. Immediately, my roommate and a half dozen friends from the minivan were running down the street after a ferret. I watched helplessly from the door for a moment, then assuming they had things under control I scrambled to pick up all my belongings and return to my meeting. When my roommate came back in a few minutes later with her pet, I put my call on silent to apologize and explain that he had escaped.
"You know, Stephanie, it's fine" she snorted with the utmost disgust. "I'm just not going to let you watch Rudolpho ever again."
I think that was totally fair.
There was also a roommate who had so many visitors that there were about two months when I was consistently living with 3-7 people in my two-bedroom apartment. After the second visitor left I confronted her about all her company explaining that it was overwhelming to always have so many strangers in the apartment. "I pay rent too." Yes, she did, and I didn't own the couch so I left it at that.
Lastly, there was the worst roommate I've had. And I don't list her as the worst because she was messy, or mean, or zero fun, or an absolute nightmare of a person. I call her the worst of my roster because she had sex with her boyfriend in our shower ALL THE TIME. Now this may not seem like such a big deal for many of you, but when your bedroom shares a wall and a vent to the bathroom you can hear everything. So not only did I have to use this shared shower, but I had to endure listening to every squeal, whisper, and giggle that accompanied the relentless thuds against my bedroom wall at all hours of the day. Even after I asked her to be respectful and even after the other roommates agreed it was absurd and asked her to stop she and her boyfriend made no efforts to slow their...productivity. I eventually moved out, and needless to say I don't feel bad about using her personal brita filter to purify vodka.
Thank you to the absolutely phenomenal roommates I have had. I hope that my time with each of you has been as pleasant for you as it has been for me. I know I suck at doing dishes, but you know I could be a whole lot worse, you ungrateful little shits.
#RavenclawTowerForever
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