I have had my share of interesting roommates. I have been blessed with some of the most awesome housemates who enriched my life and I have had the biggest of disasters. Among the best have been a twin-like classmate who inspired me to wake up and trudge to school in blowing cold ice with her and our shared pursuit of academic perfection, my fascinating undergrad roommate who demonstrated great strength less from on a rugby pitch than through her determination to move on and thrive following a terrible tragedy, and another housemate whose creativity (as well as his moodiness) seemed limitless and fascinating. Among the duds were the sublettor with the crack horse (okay, the horse was not on drugs but became known as such when she got carted off to jail for yet another drug violation and left behind the horse) and a spoiled kid, also a sublettor, who gambled his rent away and then snuck out one weekend while I was in Boston and left me with the bills. At least he spent the end of his summer in fear of me reporting him to Cornell for having another student take his final exam for him.
The moral of that story is to pick them wisely, although my first year at Cornell was spent with a random mix of nine of us who did not know each other other than being graduate students, and it turned out well. I am still friends with five of the nine, two of them very closely. I would still be friends with all but one of the nine if we had not lost touch.
I think one of the worst problems across the board with living together is passive aggressiveness. I know I have been guilty of posting a few such notices on the refrigerator asking roommates not to eat my food. In my defense, in a house of nine roommates I just was not certain of who was the culprit. Other times I just did not want to have the confrontation due to embarrassment.. for the other party. When spoilt boy clogged up the toilet and left it there to overflow and for me to find and have to clean, I did not know what else to do than post a note asking the culprit to either fix it or call someone for help next time. Only after I discovered that he was using up rolls of toilet paper to wipe the fog off the mirror after his showers and then clogging the toilet with them did I directly confront him.
He was the epitome of badness. He threw his cigarette butts all over the front lawn, threw trash out the window of his large SUV, never made use of the recycle bin despite it being a violation of city ordinance, left his lights, television, and computer on when he was out, and left his window open to try to disguise the fact that he was smoking in his room in the winter which led to a heat bill that was over 1000 USD. Yeah, I can say that I hated him. I still do. Plants and animals were disappearing with each breath he took.
Other bad roommates were more amusing than bad. I had a few in the nine person house that fell under the category of bad food roommates. They are identified through their abuse of kitchen items. One abuser claimed to "share" with me. Early in our living arrangement, while at the grocery store, he noticed that we bought similar items and suggested that we could share. Unfortunately this became quickly one sided because I regularly bought groceries that he could "share" in. I decided that it was not worth becoming confrontational about so we continued our communist food policy until he ate everything. The other person in the house was even weirder. She had gained a lot of weight in her first month in the States and was depressed about it so she began to fast as a way to lose weight. I started noticing that more of my food was missing than could be attributed to my communist roommate's sharing policy; most of the food went missing overnight. I began to suspect that this woman was coming home late at night, starving from fasting all day, and would attack the refrigerator like a rabid animal. My suspicions were confirmed when other roommates began complaining that food was missing, or attacked in some weird frenzy, such as a pint of ice cream with fork scrapings, or corners gnawed out of pizzas.
I think this behavior must have been partially psychological because of the Cake Incident of 2005. I used to occasionally make desserts that were offered to the household to partake in. It was a known policy that my dessert was communal. One time after I had baked a guava cake, one of the other roommates told me that she thought someone was eating my cake. I corrected her, that it was for everyone, but she insisted that I look at the cake. Strangely it did not look like anyone had eaten it other than the two slices that were cut out right after I baked it. Then I noticed that the cake was strangely lumpy. As my other roommate turned the cake around I could see that the cake looked like someone had dug a tunnel into the side of it. Over the next few days we would inspect the cake and to our amusement, someone was indeed excavating it. First the insides were tunneled out and then the cake started losing height. Eventually the culprit ate what was remaining of the shell of the cake. It was strange that someone would be sneaky about eating it when it was offered to everyone.
One day I opened an e-mail from yet another roommate, lambasting an anonymous other roommate for continuously eating food that did not belong to him/her, and stating that she knew who the guilty party was. Immediately following her e-mail were two more e-mails from the two food culprits denying culpability. As far as I know, they both were guilty on several occasions. As annoying as it was at the time, I can laugh about it now.
I enjoyed those days for the most part, and definitely learned how to live with others and chill out as a result. I would never choose to live in such a large household again but it is with a bit of sadness that I realize that I most likely will never have another roommate now that I am living with my favorite roommate. Not that I would have it any other way, because I choose SB over all others, but I am acknowledging that the era of the roommates is over. With it I am also closing the door on mismatched kitchenware, counters crammed with separate toiletries, and passive aggressive notes. I will also miss how fun it was to sit with a few of them, drinking beer and swapping stories, or gathering to play in the basement band. I will miss the field trips to the grocery store with all of us crammed into my car, or when we ganged up on the people who were illegally using our parking spot and encased their car in ice. I will also miss how so many people turned any event into practically a party, from swimming in the gorges to music hour in the basement. It is much more quiet with just SB even though he has a large dose of personality. I wonder how our adventures will change now that it is just the two of us.
The moral of that story is to pick them wisely, although my first year at Cornell was spent with a random mix of nine of us who did not know each other other than being graduate students, and it turned out well. I am still friends with five of the nine, two of them very closely. I would still be friends with all but one of the nine if we had not lost touch.
I think one of the worst problems across the board with living together is passive aggressiveness. I know I have been guilty of posting a few such notices on the refrigerator asking roommates not to eat my food. In my defense, in a house of nine roommates I just was not certain of who was the culprit. Other times I just did not want to have the confrontation due to embarrassment.. for the other party. When spoilt boy clogged up the toilet and left it there to overflow and for me to find and have to clean, I did not know what else to do than post a note asking the culprit to either fix it or call someone for help next time. Only after I discovered that he was using up rolls of toilet paper to wipe the fog off the mirror after his showers and then clogging the toilet with them did I directly confront him.
He was the epitome of badness. He threw his cigarette butts all over the front lawn, threw trash out the window of his large SUV, never made use of the recycle bin despite it being a violation of city ordinance, left his lights, television, and computer on when he was out, and left his window open to try to disguise the fact that he was smoking in his room in the winter which led to a heat bill that was over 1000 USD. Yeah, I can say that I hated him. I still do. Plants and animals were disappearing with each breath he took.
Other bad roommates were more amusing than bad. I had a few in the nine person house that fell under the category of bad food roommates. They are identified through their abuse of kitchen items. One abuser claimed to "share" with me. Early in our living arrangement, while at the grocery store, he noticed that we bought similar items and suggested that we could share. Unfortunately this became quickly one sided because I regularly bought groceries that he could "share" in. I decided that it was not worth becoming confrontational about so we continued our communist food policy until he ate everything. The other person in the house was even weirder. She had gained a lot of weight in her first month in the States and was depressed about it so she began to fast as a way to lose weight. I started noticing that more of my food was missing than could be attributed to my communist roommate's sharing policy; most of the food went missing overnight. I began to suspect that this woman was coming home late at night, starving from fasting all day, and would attack the refrigerator like a rabid animal. My suspicions were confirmed when other roommates began complaining that food was missing, or attacked in some weird frenzy, such as a pint of ice cream with fork scrapings, or corners gnawed out of pizzas.
I think this behavior must have been partially psychological because of the Cake Incident of 2005. I used to occasionally make desserts that were offered to the household to partake in. It was a known policy that my dessert was communal. One time after I had baked a guava cake, one of the other roommates told me that she thought someone was eating my cake. I corrected her, that it was for everyone, but she insisted that I look at the cake. Strangely it did not look like anyone had eaten it other than the two slices that were cut out right after I baked it. Then I noticed that the cake was strangely lumpy. As my other roommate turned the cake around I could see that the cake looked like someone had dug a tunnel into the side of it. Over the next few days we would inspect the cake and to our amusement, someone was indeed excavating it. First the insides were tunneled out and then the cake started losing height. Eventually the culprit ate what was remaining of the shell of the cake. It was strange that someone would be sneaky about eating it when it was offered to everyone.
One day I opened an e-mail from yet another roommate, lambasting an anonymous other roommate for continuously eating food that did not belong to him/her, and stating that she knew who the guilty party was. Immediately following her e-mail were two more e-mails from the two food culprits denying culpability. As far as I know, they both were guilty on several occasions. As annoying as it was at the time, I can laugh about it now.
I enjoyed those days for the most part, and definitely learned how to live with others and chill out as a result. I would never choose to live in such a large household again but it is with a bit of sadness that I realize that I most likely will never have another roommate now that I am living with my favorite roommate. Not that I would have it any other way, because I choose SB over all others, but I am acknowledging that the era of the roommates is over. With it I am also closing the door on mismatched kitchenware, counters crammed with separate toiletries, and passive aggressive notes. I will also miss how fun it was to sit with a few of them, drinking beer and swapping stories, or gathering to play in the basement band. I will miss the field trips to the grocery store with all of us crammed into my car, or when we ganged up on the people who were illegally using our parking spot and encased their car in ice. I will also miss how so many people turned any event into practically a party, from swimming in the gorges to music hour in the basement. It is much more quiet with just SB even though he has a large dose of personality. I wonder how our adventures will change now that it is just the two of us.
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