School Days

I have had more than my fair share of horrible roommates, but MVWR was during my junior year of college. There were four girls assigned to the room, one I already knew, J, and the other two, S and K, were paired with us randomly. Things started out friendly enough and they both seemed nice in the beginning, but things started to deteriorate rapidly. I don’t know if there was any reason for it, but K hated J with psychotic passion and talked about her constantly to anyone who would listen and hide her things. K was in ROTC and had a loud party in our dorm room without our permission for her ROTC buddies. She got drunk within the first 10 minutes and passed out in her bedroom while the guys were shotgunning in our common area. One of them got so drunk that he immediately started projectile vomiting all over our couch and carpet. Fortunately, his friends were kind enough to end the party, and although it was thoughtful of them to try and clean by using J’s vacuum to suck up the puke, we got to enjoy the lingering smell of old barf every time we turned on the vacuum after that.

S’s dad had bought a huge thing of toilet paper in the beginning of the year for her and she said we would all be welcome to use it. No need for everyone to buy toilet paper while that monster was just taking up space. So J and I didn’t buy any toilet paper. However, despite the fact that J and I bought all of the commonly used goods, like paper towels, Brita filters, cleaning supplies, etc., K and S decided halfway through the year that we did not deserve to use the toilet paper anymore, since we hadn’t paid for it rather than merely ask us to chip in. They would take a roll in and out of the bathroom with them every time and before long, J and I caught on to the passive-aggressive weirdness.

S also had a really strange lab partner who wouldn’t leave her alone (he would pretend to talk on a phone that he carried around, but it was one of those cordless ones not a cellphone). For some reason she invited him to work on their project in our common area, rather than in a public place like a library or study room, and couldn’t get rid of him. She poked her head into my room and asked me to come out and say that I was trying to sleep and would they be so kind as to keep the noise down. Then she could use that as an excuse to get him out. I said sure, and played my part, nicely but firmly. After I closed my bedroom door again, I heard S say, “Sorry, she is a TOTAL bitch.” She went on about how she didn’t want him getting verbally abused too and that he should probably leave.

The worst though was while I was in London for the winter session and apparently K had a psychotic episode. I thought things with her and I were mostly fine, but turned out that she hated me too (again, for no obvious reason) and told the other two roommates that when I got home she was going to beat me up, drag me outside, strip me naked and bind me to the flagpole in the dead of winter. S and J called the campus police to file a report, because they were afraid she was serious. She was then asked by housing to leave our apartment right after I returned from England. She got a job a few weeks later with the campus police (who apparently did not do a background check) and she came to our door to tell me that she would be ticketing my car non-stop, no matter where it was parked and I would go bankrupt from having to pay all the fines. The police were called again to tell them about this threat and she was fired. She came by once more to say that her uncle was in the Mafia and she was going to have him make us all “disappear” for getting her fired (he didn’t). After that, we never saw her again.