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Maybe She Was Raised By WolvesDec 27 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Aaaah freshman year. I know I had read stories about roommates from hell, but after living with my roommate (whose name I will keep confidential by just referring to her as RFH - short for roommate from h-ll) I thought I could write a book on roommates. Or perhaps an Epinion. The choice was obvious. I thought she might be strange the day I moved in. My one roommate had piled her things neatly in the middle of one of the rooms (it was a 2 room triple - beds in one room, desks in the other) with a note saying we would figure out the arrangement when we all returned from these orientation hiking trips we were on. That was cool. But RFH had dumped piles of clothes in every corner of the room, spilled large jars of pills over every dresser top, declared at least one of the closets, the single bed, two of the desks, and the cabinet above the sink by placing large amounts of belongings on top of everything. The pills all over everything were perhaps the most disturbing at first. Then I decided to introduce myself to the girls next door. One of them greeted me with oh god you have to live with RFH? Yeah, I said, I haven't met her yet. She's a nut, and she stole my razor and a pair of shorts. She said she would be right back to return them and she just left with them!! She's horrifying and I only met her for an hour, the girl next door replied. Well, ok, I thought maybe she isn't so bad. Returning from my hiking trip, my legs were covered in mud so I dropped my stuff in my room and went to take a shower. Coming back in to greet my roommates for the first time, I was unaware that I had cut myself shaving. My other roommate said, Oh gosh you're bleeding let me get you a bandaid. Well don't get blood on the floor, that's gross, was the hello I got from RFH. Uh thanks. I had anticipated that the room would get cleaner, that she would have put some of the knee-deep piles of clothes in the drawers once she moved in, but she never did. I'm not a neat freak, but she would throw dirty clothes in with clean ones, and step on the stuff with dirty shoes, and after a while there was a large stinky mess of clothes all over both floors and I couldn't take it anymore. So one day when she was gone, I separated it all out and folded it all in piles. Short sleeved shirts, tank tops, long sleeves, sweaters, pants, short skirts, long skirts, etc. When she came back, I said, hey I decided to clean up a little so I folded your stuff, I didn't know which drawer you wanted stuff in so I just put it in piles. Aaargh she shrieked now I don't know where anything is!! And with a fervor that reminded me of a child tearing through a box of toys, she threw everything back into its original state of disarray. Grrrr. She never went to class. Ever. Instead, she committed herself to random projects in the room during the day. Once I found her with a screwdriver attacking the grate on the bathroom door. I'm unscrewing it so I can paint it and put it back in, she said. Uh, ok. Once she took apart my bookshelf and made a shoe rack for herself with the wood. We're going to get fined for dorm damage!! I would tell her. She unscrewed and replaced all the light covers. I wondered why she was so concerned about the things in the room but would never clean up the floor. And then there were the food issues. She would be eating an apple, and throw the core under her bed where it would fester for weeks before we found it. Half eaten candy bars were left to rot in her desk drawers. She attracted bugs. Lots of them. One day I was drinking from a juice box and put it down on my desk for a second. When I turned around, she was drinking the rest of it. What are you doing? I asked. I don't know why you're so selfish about food, she replied, in my house we always eat off each other's plates. Apparently they also ate with their fingers, because she did too. Even things like spaghetti with sauce. RFH liked to burp alot. She was proud of how loud she could burp and often called attention to it. And she spit like a cowboy in a Western. Right on the carpet. Sometimes I wondered if she had been raised by wolves. A red sweater I owned disappeared for a few months. So did several pairs of shoes and some shirts. I found them later, stretched out and badly worn, among the piles that cluttered the room. Yes, she borrowed things without asking. All the time. Once she asked to borrow some underwear because hers wasn't clean. Uh, no. I came back from a weekend trip to find a pack of her cigarettes in the pocket of my winter coat. Guess she borrowed that while I was away. I was practically on the verge of having a checklist of belongings so I would know what she had commandeered for the time being. Sometimes at night, I would feel large hands on my face. I would wake up to see her putting my head on my pillow. The way you sleep concerns me, I think it's bad for your back, she would say. I wanted to ask her, do you realize that sometimes you are SO creepy??? but settled for, please don't do that. Even though it was New Hampshire in the middle of February, and despite loud protests from me and my other roommate, she would open all the windows around 2 in the morning and decrease the temperature to a cool 20 degrees. Then she entered her artsy phase. She drew pictures of very heavy, nude women with charcoal pencil and hung them in every corner of the room. I wasn't sure if they were there out of her mistaken suspicion that her work had artistic merit, or for shock value. Considering she didn't go to class, she had lots of time and made lots of drawings. They were in the bathroom, above all of our desks, in the bedroom, on the door, etc. If I left my computer on, she would peruse through my email and sometimes use it. Once when I told someone I was sick because I didn't feel like going out with them (and subsequently went out with someone else) she emailed him to tell him exactly where I was. Just trying to be helpful, she said. Stuff like this went on for 6 months before the college realized that perhaps someone who doesn't go to class isn't really gearing up for a degree and needed to take a term or two off. I couldn't believe she was finally leaving. Or that the day she left, she didn't pack anything and left a note for me to do it. It was the final act in the saga of the RFH, I guess I couldn't have expected any less. All in all, it was an experience. I guess it's one of those things you can chalk up to, hey it builds character. And it's a source for stories that are going to be funny for years to come.  |
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