Dorm Legend

The summer before my freshman year of college, I got a letter with the names of the two girls I would be living with for my first year. Approximately one week after receiving the letter, there was a knock on my parents’ front door. Standing on the porch was My Very Worst Roommate (MVWR), who had driven seven hours to see me without letting me know that she was coming or telling her mother. She was wearing calf-length Winnie The Pooh denim overalls, purple socks, and purple Chuck Taylor’s. Her hair was in 2-foot long pigtails.

My parents were appalled that she had driven the whole way without telling anyone. They urged her to call her mother, which she did, lying to her in front of my parents and telling her she was at the movies. She left my house 20 minutes later because she had to get home that night.

Despite this obvious warning, the three of us (me, MVWR, and our third roommate) decided to get together before the semester began to get to know each other. I drove the seven hours to pick up MVWR, then the three hours back to the third roommate’s house. After returning from a weekend of finding out that MVWR didn’t drink, had never kissed anyone, was a modern dance major, loved Tigger, and wore overalls every day, I received a letter informing us that our third roommate had switched rooms and we were being assigned a new third. What a huge surprise.

After two months living with MVWR, our new third roommate moved out, into a room vacated by a girl who had committed suicide. It was when MVWR and I lived alone that the true horror began. She began to sleep with her light on and only came in the room after class if our RA opened the door and checked to see if I was in the room. One day in late November, towards the end of the semester, I was working on my homework when MVWR suddenly fell on the floor and started screaming and crying. It turns out that she had been having panic attacks all semester and had hid them from me. She told me that she had had a dream that I killed her with a knife and that’s why she was afraid to enter the room alone if I was there.

That day I went to the Hall Director and asked for a room change. Not only did I get a sweet room on the second floor with huge windows, but my new roommate was a senior who stayed with her boyfriend 95% of the time. I STILL hear stories about MVWR from people who went to my college and didn’t know that I lived with her. She was a living legend.