The Roommate Saga

Today, I’m going to tell you a little story.  Actually, it’s not so little, but it’s amusing nonetheless.  This story is about the roommates that I have lived with throughout my life.

Obviously, I could be really cheesy and talk about my parents being great roommates… but I won’t.

Since I arrived at my first day of college, I have been (shall we say) “blessed” with the presence of 5 roommates.  2 in the dorms, before I got a single, and then 3 at the apartment I lived at.  Names will not be changed, since I know only one of these people read my blog, and we get along now and laugh about it.

Me and Drew now. Neither of us are "gangsta", just a bit tipsy.

Drew was my first college roommate.  First impressions: bigger than me (but then again, I’m 5’7″, so who isn’t), a fiery red mini-’fro, and he was loud.  I guess I should call it “friendly” or “outgoing”, but “loud” was the first thought I had.  Drew and I actually got along great.  We had a lot of common interests, from sports and poker to video games… enough to keep 2 people living in a 14×10′ space from hating each other.

Unfortunately, his loud and boisterous attitude around the dorms translated into “douchebag”, which then translated into “Drewschbag”.  He wasn’t very well liked by very many people on our floor, so I found myself skirting a very very fine line between “yeah man, you’re cool” with him and “yeah guys, he’s an idiot” with everyone else.  Poker nights were the worst… if he didn’t play (or got knocked out early), most of the people playing would take shots at him.  I tried to stay out of it for the most part, but I succumbed occasionally.  We lived together, after all… we’re going to have differences, right?

Favorite story regarding Drew: we were playing poker one night, and he’d been talking about how easy it was to “read” me and what I had.  I get dealt pocket 4s.  He gets pocket Jacks.  Round of betting, and the flop comes out… 4 J 4.  Drew has a boat (full house), and I have 4 of a kind.  I slowplayed that hand like a champ, but kept calling any bet Drew made.  He was so pissed, having no clue what I had.  Finally, after 2 meaningless cards came out, he pushes all in, and exuberantly throws his boat down.  I sit there for a few seconds, and right as he starts to reach for the chips, I quietly put my 4s down.  Stunned silence… then a “Oooooh, snap” from a guy named Derek.

I still gloat about that hand to this day.

Anyway, Drew and I really only had one problem.  He was a big, sweaty dude that liked the room cool when he slept.  This meant leaving the window open at night.  During the summer/early fall, that’s fine.  But, this also meant during the winter, when it got to be sub-freezing outside, and snow was on the ground.  Now, for a minor tidbit about me: when it comes to blankets, I’m mildly claustrophobic.  I sometimes get a strange feeling that I’m being strangled by them.  Not really sure why, but as such, this prevents me from usually using more than 1 blanket.  So, at my dorm, I had 1 sheet, and 1 blanket.   Drew, on the other hand, had (and this has been disputed, but this is what I remember) a sheet, 2 blankets, and an afghan on his bed, then slept in his boxers with the window open.

…. really?

Needless to say, I got really really really really cold.  Ended off getting a pretty nasty cold around finals week that lasted all of winter break.  I wasn’t too thrilled.  So, I started looking for a new roommate.  Total time with Drew: 1 semester + 1 week. (Again, I will state… Drew and I are cool [get it?] about everything to this day.  ”The Window Effect” was just something stupid that we had to deal with, and now that we don’t live together, we actually get along quite well.)

Ron was a guy that lived down the hall.  We really only had one thing in common, and that was video games.  I remember us getting together to go through Halo 1 on Legendary a couple of times.  He was a pretty cool dude, but again, we had one thing in common… yeah.  Anyway, I needed to get out of the Winter Weather Advisory, so about a week into 2nd semester, when a room opened up, I asked Ron if he wanted to get away from his stupid roommate (who’s stories would stretch for miles and miles and miles… guh, what an idiot) and share a dorm room.

I definitely got my geek on during this period of my life.  Video games, random stupid videos, etc.  Ron was friends with a big group of other geeks/nerds down at the end of the hallway, so I found myself splitting time between that group and the group I’d gotten to be friends with while rooming with Drew.  I also got to know Kyle, a guy who lived across the hall from me and went to school in a neighboring town growing up.  Things were pretty good.  And then the feminine hormones kicked in… or something.

Ron (his real name is Ryan, but we called him Ron… long story) had a brother named Jon, who had graduated about… oh, 4 years ahead of us.  He lived in our dorm, on our floor, and knew some of the older guys on the floor, so he’d come back occasionally.  I remember stretching a router and ethernet cable across the entire wing of our dorm, just to play some 6-on-6 Halo 1 games (they hated Halo 2)… those were a blast.

Aaaanyway, Jon came down to visit one weekend, and slept on a mat on our floor.  At one point, Ron was out of the room, and Jon asked me about something that was going on in his life.  Now, normally, I would never divulge any information about someone… that’s not how I roll.  However, 1) Jon was Ron’s brother, and 2) he seemed to know pretty much everything, except with a few details wrong.  So, I corrected those very minor details for him, and that was that.

Ron didn’t talk to me for about a week and a half (I had no clue why), and then all of a sudden exploded at me, telling me that I shouldn’t be “telling people personal s*** about my life!”  Again, I stated 1) Dude, it was your brother that you get along with really really well, and 2) he knew everything except for a few very minor details, and I just corrected those for him.  Nope, not good enough.  Ron and I lived in pretty much silence the rest of our roommate career.  Thankfully, one of his friends was in need of a roommate, so he ended off moving next door and leaving me to a single room all by myself.  And since I had a girlfriend, I really wasn’t too mad about that at all  Total time with Ron: 2 semesters (spring + fall the following school year).

I spent the next 1.5 years in the dorms in a single room… and it rocked.  Kept my own hours, listened to music when I went to sleep, etc. etc.

Then I took a year off of school, went to work for John Deere, and decided living with my parents just wasn’t a viable option… so I moved into an apartment complex in town called Hillcrest.  Now, I was moving in during September, after everyone had already settled down, so I ended off just joining 3 guys that needed a 4th roommate.  Had my own room/closet, shared a bathroom with one other guy, and then had a shared kitchen/living room between the 4 of us.  The guys I lived with were Scott, Jake, and Luke.  Scott and Jake were cousins that had grown up together, and Luke was friends with the guy who’s spot I took over for.

First, I’ll say this… Scott and Luke were pretty cool, all in all.  Everyone was relatively anti-social in that apartment, but I could deal with that.  Scott was a compulsive OCD cleaner, and Luke kept to himself, so I never had problems with either of them.  (Btw, if you’re reading this, Scott… thanks for all the cleaning you did around the place.)

Jake… Jake’s an idiot.  That’s the only way to put it.  You want an example? Ok.

Jake did a whole bunch of really dumb things throughout the school year (or non-summer months for this working guy) that I was none too happy with, but thankfully, none of them really affected me too much.  Then, in the summer, EVERYONE left the apartment.  It was awesome.  I had the place to myself, and I loved it.  Jake told me that he and a buddy of his would be back at a certain date, but until then, the place was mine.

I was in heaven.

So, I brought my guitar equipment home from church, set it up in the middle of my living room, put my PS3 and TV out there as well, and pretty much moved from spending all of my time at my desk, to spending all of my time on the couch.  I also would park my bike inside, since it would sometimes rain and (at this point in time) I used it to get to and from summer classes.  Now, mind you, between everything that I owned, that was probably close to $5-6,000 worth of equipment.

I was out playing disc golf with my friends Doug and Jordan one day, and I get a call from Jake.  ”Hey, can you come unlock the door?”

What?

Apparently, Jake had come back, and needed something out of his room.  Ok, that’s cool… just be careful of my stuff.  He got it, left, I locked up, and went back to Jordan’s to hang out.

On a whim, at about 9pm that night, I decided that we should go back to my place and chill.  Something just seemed fishy about Jake being around, and I didn’t trust him.  So off we went.  We get back, I open the door, and what do I see?  About 20-25 people in my apartment.

What… the… f***.

Apparently, Jake had been down at his friend’s apartment, and it had gotten busted by the cops (oh yeah, 95% of these people, including Jake, were underage), so Jake had volunteered “his” apartment to be where the party migrated to.

My equipment?  Unceremoniously THROWN into my bedroom.  Pedal board, amp, 3 guitars, my bike, my PS3, my laptop… I’m not joking when I said thrown.

I almost killed that kid on the spot.

Thankfully, I kept my cool… also thankfully (I found out later), nothing was broken.  And triple thankfully, I have awesome friends who, without my prompting (or consulting me) got back at him pretty good.  I can’t exactly post on here what they did, but needless to say, it was hilarious and made him look like a complete idiot.

Oh, and best part of the night?  One of Jake’s friends, also drunk, thought that Jake was being a complete idiot, in combination because of what he’d done to me, as well as just his drunkeness taking hold of him and causing him to say stupid things.  So, they stepped outside, and his friend punched Jake in the mouth.  Knocked him out cold, right on my patio, for about 5 minutes.  I was so happy.

Needless to say, when school started, I got out of there as fast as I could.  I now live in the dorms again, in a single room.  No more roommates for me for a while.  Total time with Scott, Luke, and Jackass Jake: slightly less than 1 year.

So, those are my stories.  5 roommates in 4 years.  We all have our faults… I’ve just been really unlucky, I guess.