Temper Tantrums, Hissyfits and Other Child-Like Behaviour
Being stranded on a mountain top, that’ll do it. But you know what works better? Bad roommates.
You know one time I screamed at a roommate because she threw away my cookie tray without asking permission to do so? Yep. Granted, we had been using the cookie tray to catch the drips from a disgusting leak in our disgusting crack-den of a bathroom, but still I was thinking ‘How am I going to make French fries for chrissakes?!’ So I screamed at her. Shame on me.
Shame on me and shame on them. Sharing space with people is tough. You never know exactly what about them will work or what will get on your nerves more than bamboo shoots under your fingernails. It’s a delicate balance between doing the dishes on a regular schedule and trying not to overdose by spending every waking minute with them. Advice I have often not heeded: “Just because you’re friends, doesn’t mean you’ll be good roommates.” Of course, just because you’re not friends doesn’t mean you’ll be good roommates either. So picking and choosing who you can share your space with can be hazardous to your health, and there really isn’t a rule book to follow. But sometimes you can get a really good story out of a really bad living situation. The following is a selection of bad roommate stories I have gathered over the years. It’s amazing the behaviour that comes out when you’re really freakin’ tired of looking at the same person day after day.
The Ice Storm hit Kingston in January of 1998. Most people decided to empty out their fridges, have a big old barbeque and lots of beer. Most people had fun. My roommate and I, however, decided to give each other the cold shoulder. (Literally, since it was that cold out.) The climax of that fight was awesome, though, I’d just like to mention, because it involved me calling roommate’s parent to try and help me coax roommate out of a locked bedroom in a house with no electricity or heat. And it worked. Sort of. Heh.
Of course, nothing unites better than a common enemy. After over a year of some tough times with roommate above, we decided that our mutual hatred of new crazy roommate was even stronger than our discomfort around each other. New crazy roommate was horrible. She made loud sex noises with someone who was most definitely not her boyfriend of eight years. She stumbled home at four in the morning, drunk, and vomited in the living room garbage pail. And then left it by the radiator in the kitchen. (!) And then left for home for the Easter Long Weekend. (!!) Ewwwwww. When old crazy roommate and I decided that we were moving out at the end of the school year to leave new crazy roommate to her own devices, well, we didn’t want to be nasty. So we weren’t. We didn’t leave the place a mess or anything. We just left it absolutely empty. It was a complete void. No curtains. No lightbulbs. No garbage pails for new crazy roommate to puke in. Nothing but an empty tube on the toilet paper roll. Heh.
In my last year of university I decided it was time for a whole new set of roommates. Unfortunately, I chose them to be Sloth, Scattered and Sickly. Sickly was uptight and didn’t like messes, it made her sick, and I sympathized. Sloth was, well, self-explanatory. He had also never done a load of laundry in his life and kind of missed his mommy. Scattered was alternately over-organized or in the middle of a breakdown. (And she’s always like this, I have driven in a car with her and it’s the kind of fingernails-dug-deep-into-the-door-handle-praying-for-your-life experience that you don’t want to duplicate, often.) One day, I lost my head with all of them and turned into some sort of militant dictator, supervising them while they cleaned out all the rotten vegetables in the fridge and set mouse traps to get rid of our resident rodents. I might as well have put on Prince Harry’s favourite costume. I’m surprised any of them ever talked to me again.
All this to say I’m getting a new roommate in the near future. Thank goodness I know she is both patient and tolerant. I’ve lived with her before, incident free. Which is good, because apparently, I’m not that easy to live with.
You know one time I screamed at a roommate because she threw away my cookie tray without asking permission to do so? Yep. Granted, we had been using the cookie tray to catch the drips from a disgusting leak in our disgusting crack-den of a bathroom, but still I was thinking ‘How am I going to make French fries for chrissakes?!’ So I screamed at her. Shame on me.
Shame on me and shame on them. Sharing space with people is tough. You never know exactly what about them will work or what will get on your nerves more than bamboo shoots under your fingernails. It’s a delicate balance between doing the dishes on a regular schedule and trying not to overdose by spending every waking minute with them. Advice I have often not heeded: “Just because you’re friends, doesn’t mean you’ll be good roommates.” Of course, just because you’re not friends doesn’t mean you’ll be good roommates either. So picking and choosing who you can share your space with can be hazardous to your health, and there really isn’t a rule book to follow. But sometimes you can get a really good story out of a really bad living situation. The following is a selection of bad roommate stories I have gathered over the years. It’s amazing the behaviour that comes out when you’re really freakin’ tired of looking at the same person day after day.
The Ice Storm hit Kingston in January of 1998. Most people decided to empty out their fridges, have a big old barbeque and lots of beer. Most people had fun. My roommate and I, however, decided to give each other the cold shoulder. (Literally, since it was that cold out.) The climax of that fight was awesome, though, I’d just like to mention, because it involved me calling roommate’s parent to try and help me coax roommate out of a locked bedroom in a house with no electricity or heat. And it worked. Sort of. Heh.
Of course, nothing unites better than a common enemy. After over a year of some tough times with roommate above, we decided that our mutual hatred of new crazy roommate was even stronger than our discomfort around each other. New crazy roommate was horrible. She made loud sex noises with someone who was most definitely not her boyfriend of eight years. She stumbled home at four in the morning, drunk, and vomited in the living room garbage pail. And then left it by the radiator in the kitchen. (!) And then left for home for the Easter Long Weekend. (!!) Ewwwwww. When old crazy roommate and I decided that we were moving out at the end of the school year to leave new crazy roommate to her own devices, well, we didn’t want to be nasty. So we weren’t. We didn’t leave the place a mess or anything. We just left it absolutely empty. It was a complete void. No curtains. No lightbulbs. No garbage pails for new crazy roommate to puke in. Nothing but an empty tube on the toilet paper roll. Heh.
In my last year of university I decided it was time for a whole new set of roommates. Unfortunately, I chose them to be Sloth, Scattered and Sickly. Sickly was uptight and didn’t like messes, it made her sick, and I sympathized. Sloth was, well, self-explanatory. He had also never done a load of laundry in his life and kind of missed his mommy. Scattered was alternately over-organized or in the middle of a breakdown. (And she’s always like this, I have driven in a car with her and it’s the kind of fingernails-dug-deep-into-the-door-handle-praying-for-your-life experience that you don’t want to duplicate, often.) One day, I lost my head with all of them and turned into some sort of militant dictator, supervising them while they cleaned out all the rotten vegetables in the fridge and set mouse traps to get rid of our resident rodents. I might as well have put on Prince Harry’s favourite costume. I’m surprised any of them ever talked to me again.
All this to say I’m getting a new roommate in the near future. Thank goodness I know she is both patient and tolerant. I’ve lived with her before, incident free. Which is good, because apparently, I’m not that easy to live with.
posted by nerdifer at 2:08 p.m.
1 Comments:
enjoyed it and I will be adding it to my favorites. I have a really cool
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