So, Mike and I went to dinner a couple weeks ago with a couple of friends. Somehow, we got onto the topic of college roommates. And I was unfortunate enough to have flashbacks to my freshmen year at Shippensburg U. Later, on the drive home, Mike made the comment (because he knows I'm a blogophile) now THAT would make a good blog! And so here's the story of my freshmen year...
I was totally excited to be starting school in a few weeks, and excited to meet my new roommate. Once I got her information, I gave her a call to coordinate things. When she answered the phone I was a bit taken aback, because she sounded like a 50 year old millionaire socialite. I'm not exactly sure how to explain what that sounds like, but it makes sense in my mind...Anyway. We talked things out and decided we wanted to do bunk beds, so we had more floor space in our room. She agreed to take the top bunk, since I had earlier classes than her, and she didn't want me to wake her up while climbing down in the morning. I had to move in to school about 3 weeks early for volleyball, so I had the room to myself for a while. I got all my stuff moved in, put pictures and posters on my wall, filled my drawers and my desk...the works. 3 weeks later, I walked into my room after a morning vball practice and thought my room had been robbed! My sheets and blankets had been unceremoniously ripped off my bed and piled on my desk, and my pictures had all been removed from the wall. I was standing there with my jaw on the floor, trying to figure out what was going on when I heard someone walk in behind me, and say,
"Hellooooo...I'm Jenny Petty."
I turned around, and my shock just continued to grow. I was looking at a Little Person. This in and of itself is not what shocked me. What shocked me was that she was completely dressed in black, and was wearing a bright red wig underneath a giant wide-brimmed hat. Without my even asking, she explained that the top bunk was too high for her to climb into, and so she took my stuff off the bottom bed so she could take it. A few seconds later her parents walked in and gave me some dirty looks (ok, so I'm sure I looked pretty weird in my spandex shorts, knee high socks and wife beater...) and I decided to just walk away, rather than flip out on my new roommate and her parents.
I walked down to my friend Molly's room, and just sat there, trying to take in what just happened. Little did I know, it would get worse. After my night volleyball practice I went back to my room (about 9:30) and the lights were off. Phew! Some time to myself! NOT! I turned on the lights only to see that Jenny Petty was asleep, and that her wig was neatly perched on one of those mannequin heads in front of our mirror. I also got a peak, and saw that underneath that wig she was wearing earlier, Jenny Petty was bald. Bald as a cue ball. She told me that in Middle School she decided she didn't like her hair, so she started wearing wigs. Then eventually she wore them so much, that she actually developed bald spots all over her head. So from then on, she just shaved her head and stuck with the wigs. Anyway... I only ended up living with Jenny Petty for one semester, because her eccentricities were just too much for me. Here are some things that I just couldn't handle:
*Jenny Petty decided to decorate her half of the room with pictures of aliens and dead people. No lie.
*Jenny Petty would often sing opera, very loudly, at very random times of the day.
*Jenny Petty went to bed somewhere between 8-9 pm every night. And would get really pissy if I tried to do anything requiring noise (aka, getting dressed, eating, watching tv, etc.) or having lights on (aka, reading or studying, or ya know...living?)
*Jenny Petty would take phone messages from my friends and not give them to me.
*Jenny Petty listened to Phantom of the Opera non-stop, if she wasn't singing opera herself.
*Jenny Petty let her little brother sleep in my bed, on my sheets, while I was away at a volleyball tourny. She did not tell me this until 2 days after I got back, and I wondered aloud how in the world there were crumbs in my sheets, since I did not eat in my bed. "Oh, that must have been my little brother! He's so messy!" Let's just say that I freaked out. I'm pretty particular about dirty sheets. Especially when they've been dirtied by some strange boy.
*Jenny Petty would use my face wash and deodorant when she ran out of hers. I only discovered this when I walked in one day, and saw her finish deodorizing, and put it back on MY vanity. I asked her about it, and she very casually explained how she borrowed my stuff sometimes. SICK.
*Jenny Petty had an unhealthy obsession with vampires (Anna...have I told you that I'm worried about you??).
*Jenny Petty would talk in her sleep. And say very creepy things.
*Jenny Petty very rarely left our room, unless it was for class and meals. Which means I NEVER had ANY alone time. EVER.
And so, by the end of one semester I'd had enough. I asked for a change. They set me up with the only girl in the dorm who didn't already have a roommate. And so I moved in with Taleemah.
Who was nocturnal. She never slept at night, and very often slept all day. She ordered chinese food almost every night, and almost always asked to borrow money from me to pay for it, AFTER she'd made the order. She only showered a couple times a week. She never went to class, and yet was on scholarship. She came home very drunk, very often, and was very loud and smelly. She often let her boyfriend sleep over with her. He had a deviated septum, and snored so loudly that our neighbors on both sides complained about it just as much as I did. Taleemah and her boyfriend also had sex while I was in the room sleeping. Finally fed up, one time I just got up and walked out of the room. It didn't even phase them. Sick. Taleemah would leave her chinese leftovers sit out on her desk, stinking our room up something fierce. If her boyfriend was not in our room, Taleemah was on the phone with him. They would sit there. Neither of them talking. For hours. Just listening to each other breathe while they watched TV in their respective locations. She downloaded crap onto my computer without asking, and caused it to crash. And then tried to download it again after I got it fixed. At the end of the year Taleemah took several of my books to the school store to sell them back for cash. Before I was done with finals.
And that is why I still can't decide which roommate was worse.
13 comments:
Oh, and I forgot to mention that after I had moved out of Jenny's room, Mike tried to call me there, because he had a crush on me and was trying to date me...Jenny would take messages and act like I still lived there!
That is seriously almost unbelieveable!! What did you do after freshman year?
Wow. Like Single-White-Female Wow. Capital W Wow. I think one of the learning experiences you're supposed to have while in college is living with different people whom you'd never choose to live with on your own...but that's just. Um. I don't even know. That's just insane. W.O.W.
And sick. There were so many different levels of sick. PUKE-TASTIC SICKNESS...
I moved into an apartment after my freshmen year, so I could pick my own roommates! It was definitely a relief!!
I wonder who has the job of pairing up roommates. I think 90% of the time the matches are so wrong it's ridiculous. That would make yet another GREAT reality TV show, roommate swap or something like that. Whoever has the worst roommate gets a full ride scholarship.
My freshman roommate was OK. We were equally influential in our self-destructive behaviors. Jerry's roommate at Hazelton was about as weird as Jenny Petty, just a male version.
Mine freshman roommate started out being called Kathy, a relatively nice gal. But then she morphed into some crazy person called Kate, who one afternoon hung a whole box of my tampons by their strings on every door in our dorm. But soooooo much better than Jenny Penny and Taleema.
Or Jenny Petty as it were. And that was My not Mine. I don't heave have the crack-laced girl scout cookies.
And 'heave' was supposed to be 'even.' OK, so I have other sources for my crack.
Ooh ooh! Can I play? Two of my freshman year roommates (I had 5) were pretty normal gals that I never had issues with, but the other 3 ALL had several "WTH?" moments:
The richest one of all of us brought her car to school (new Camry) but told all of us on the first day that we shouldn't ever bother to ask her for a ride, because she didn't allow passengers in her car. And she meant it. She really never gave any of us rides. Not even to church.
She had more money than the rest of us combined, but she would regularly sneak into my room when she thought I was still asleep and spray down her body with my perfume. But if you asked to use her lotion she would go ballistic with rage and all her "I.DO.NOT.SHARE." freakiness would manifest itself something fierce.
Here's where it gets fun: she also lived closest to home (South Jordan, UT -- we were in Provo) so over Christmas when the rest of us were getting ready to make long trips back to our families, she hung out a few more days "because she had to work". When the rest of us arrived back to the apartment after the holidays, it looked like our apartment had been robbed.
I was missing almost half of the clothes I had left behind, 3 bottles of BBW lotion, 23 CD's, my curling iron, and 2 pairs of shoes. Also missing from other roommates: a brand new, tags still attached ski jacket, dozens of movies, several more pairs of shoes, a black formal dress, and most of one girl's jewelry.
We honestly thought someone had broken in, but when we called maintenance, they said whoever had come in had used a key. So we called "Sherrie" (because that is her name) and asked if she had taken any of our stuff. She went nuts. Flatly denied it. Went on and on about how she had loads more money than any of us, and how our stuff was all crappy, and why on earth would someone like her steal from girls like us, etc.
Jump to FEBRUARY. Sherrie still won't come back to the apartment. She claims we have offended her, so she keeps commuting from South Jordan to UVSC every day rather than living with us.
Then one day in late February, she barges into the apartment, throws literally SIX BLACK GLAD BAGS of stuff into the front room and slams the door.
There's all our stuff. All of it. All wrinkled and inside out and stuffed into garbage bags.
She never said a word about it, never apologized, and moved back in sometime in March.
And she still wouldn't give us rides in her car.
I could move on to other roommates, but I think I've written an absurdly too long comment already.
WOW, wow, wow, wow, wow!
No, no, Nicole. I want to hear more!
Nicole, that is insane....INSANE! (Christy)
Post a Comment