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I think I may have posted an abbreviated version of my roommate experience before, but I may as well go here.
My freshman year of college, my roommate was an extremely scary pathological liar with a harassment record. The first thing she said to me was that white people make her uncomfortable, and that she hopes I don't mind her gigantic...um....dueling banjos. So I'm thinking to myself about how I can possibly play down the fact that I am white and strategies to dry my bras at odd hours so she wouldn't notice their less than average size. This turns out to be the least of my worries. I get to college as an extremely timid freshman, and she not only confuses me by also being white, but she is essentially Bon Qui Qui...gurrrrrl she will cuuuut you. She threatened to cut everyone left and right. It was really odd and scary. She was also a crazy pathological liar who told me that she was going to law school, and college was really just a formality because she was already accepted at Columbia law. Her "acceptance letter" was laughable...it was obviously photoshopped and the letterhead said 'Colombia Law'.
Anyway, because I was a really dumb freshman, I told the floor that she was scary and threatened to cut me, not expecting she'd figure it out when things got back to her. Turns out she doesn't like bitches like me who talk crap...gurrrl she will cut them. Which means gurrrrl she will cut me. And no, no empty threat. She brandished a switchblade, I somehow got out of there and went tearing into my RA's room. The campus security didn't believe me until they found the blade in her room. She said it was a box cutter. She needs to cut boxes. It was a struggle to get it back.
Postscript: The university let her stay in her room and didn't give her another roommate. While they didn't do anything about her violent behavior, they asked her if she could possibly threaten people less. She said she'd think about it. Fast forward three years later...guess who sat behind me when I took the LSAT? I wonder how her crim law class at "Colombia Law" is going.
So after these harrowing first two weeks of college, I went to live with my new roommate, who I shall call Melinda, and her boyfriend, Cape Man. Once I got to know them, they were actually very nice, albeit odd, but it was kind of a shaky start.
I walked into my new room, determined that this would work, and found it dark, with white sheets strewn all over her side. As I go to introduce myself on her side of the room (we had these cool little half wall partitions), I find her flung face forward on her bed, distraught. Cape Man rises and looks at me menacingly. I introduce myself as the new roommate. Cape Man swishes his cape at me, and in the austere setting of my new room, I was fairly unnerved. So I went back to my side of the room to make everything pink and covered in glitter.
In the midst of hanging up four million photos of my friends from high school, I hear a thrash. She yells at him. He yells back. She yells back, and he starts crying. No, sobbing. Loudly. Sobbing and yelling wahhhhhhitriedsohardddddd. She starts sobbing and yelling back. I have no idea what they were fighting about, but they soon made up, if you catch my drift, and I found myself and my computer, sitting outside my door and explaining to my new hallmates who the hell I was.
The next day, I thought it would all be fine once I found an apology note on my desk from her. Then on my ride up, I got in the elevator with her and Cape Man. He turns to her, and as if I wasn't actually alive, said, "Look. It's the roommate." She replied, "yes. The roommate." He says, in monotone, "Ahhh, the roommate. We should...take her out for chinese food." She replies, also in robotic monotone, "Yes. Chinese food." They turned to me mechanically and said, "Do you like...chinese food?"
Melinda and Cape Man actually turned out to be the most entertaining people to live with. Yes, he got mad at me when I stepped on his cape, but their antics were so ridiculous that I sometimes miss them, and how they made up for my lack of television. She would go hunting on the weekends, and come back and make deer jerky in the room, and then they would fight because he was convinced she was boinking other hunters in the woods. One night, I heard loud crashing, and as it got increasingly loud, I realized few people knock THAT many things over when they have sex and worked up the courage to peek around the half wall. They were sword fighting. With rubber swords. Of course. Sometimes, they would disappear for a week and I would blissfully enjoy my single room until my RA asked if they were alive, glowering at me when I asked if that was a trick question.
Sometimes, when Cape Man was magically not with her (which was rare...they would go to class together, even if only one of them was actually enrolled in said class), Melinda would give me love advice. She meant well, but it was all I could do to keep a straight face when she would say stuff like, "I have had but a year of my sweet Cape Man darling, and my heart knows only boundless joy. If only I had known when I walked into Chemistry my freshman year, that I would soon taste the bittersweet nectar of the fruit of true love, and its intoxicant would course through my veins."
The following year, I lived with three friends, one who expected us to lie to her boyfriend because she was cheating on him, and another who would have parties, not invite us, and then get mad that we wouldn't clean up after her. By the end of that year, I really missed Cape Man.
There are no stories about my current roommate, since he is a wonderful classmate of mine who has to be the most laid back person I've ever met. We have recognized that I am fantastic at keeping a spotless bathroom, and he is compulsive about keeping the kitchen neat. It is idyllic, but there are no good stories.
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