Good morning one and all. A little while ago, I was having lunch with my co-worker Rob when I stopped mid-sentence and immediately pulled out my cell phone to text message myself. I actually write to myself as often as I write to others. Fortunately, I still talk to others more than myself. It might be a problem if that ratio changes much. "What's going on?" he asked. "I just realized that I haven't written about something on my blog yet, and that's unacceptable," I told him. This is that story. I don't know why it's taken so long, and I apologize.
My freshman year of college, I lived in the residence halls and had the time of my life. A bunch of 18 year-olds from different places coming together to learn both in and out of the classroom and have fun along the way. Great times by all accounts. My buddy Rockabye was my roommate, and we had a frickin' blast for the first two quarters of the school year.
Near the very end of the second quarter, he told me that he was taking the next one off to be closer to his family during some difficult health times. This was very sad news indeed. Even though he said he'd be back for the following fall (which he was), it was still the end of an era. We'd had a lot of fun in that room, from making little skits to Vanilla Ice songs to randomly rearranging the furniture at 3 in the morning. After a couple of days of being sad that room 6214 would no longer be the same, I saw a silver lining. Since this was the very end of the quarter and the number of spring transfer students was very low, there was a high probability that I'd have a single for the rest of the school year. That was something I had no problem getting behind.
I spent some of Spring Break imagining how I could arrange my room. Should I put the twin beds together in the middle of the wall and have both desks side to side on the opposing one? With two closets, I can bring more of my "situational" attire (i.e. costumes) should the need arise. With more space, maybe my room would be the new "hang out room" for my friends for when the lounge was occupied by studiers. This was going to be awesome.
The first day back, I took the elevator up to the sixth floor and started walking over to my room. Just before I got there, I noticed something taped to the door. "Welcome, Wayne Lin!" said a newly cut sign. "Oh fuck," I said aloud. I hadn't really thought about getting a new roommate and sharing what had been my space with a stranger. With the quarter being only ten weeks, we'd probably just get around to really knowing each other and then the experiment would be over. What if we really didn't get along and he made my sunny freshman year suddenly lose its luster? I was not a happy camper.
Greg hung out with me that day for moral support. Noon came, and still no Wayne. We ran out to get a quick bite to eat and ran into the guy in charge of our building. "Are you sure he's coming?" I asked. "Yes, he'll be here, and you'll be fine," he told me. 3:00pm came, and it was still just me and Greg hanging out and getting ready for the new quarter. Dinner time rolled around, and I resigned myself to the fact that he might come while I was out, and that would have to be ok. One bed, closet, and desk were clearly mine, so he couldn't do much damage.
After dinner, we came back to find the room exactly as we left it. Going a little stir crazy, we headed down to the lobby to hang out with the desk attendant and see others from the building to talk about our respective breaks from school. At about 9:00pm, I overheard the desk attendant saying, "Well welcome to UCSB!" I walked over to the desk. "Are you Wayne?" I asked. "Yes," he said. "Hi, I'm your roommate, Peter. It's nice to meet you." My first impression was the he seemed nice enough; ya know, not giving off the mass-murderer vibe or anything.
Greg and I helped him with his stuff and got into the elevator. "I should probably start getting to know him now," I thought. "So," I started, "where are you transferring from?" "UCLA," he said. "Oh, cool. My mom went there, and so did my aunt, uncle, and two cousins," I told him. This was going well, and we already sort of had something in common. "I went there for three years," he said with a fairly thick Asian accent, "and then I took a few years off to start my international trade business, and then I went back and took a few more classes. I need to finish up here though because all of the remaining classes I need to graduate are offered this quarter." My head was spinning with this new information. "Um, how old are you?" I asked, carefully monitoring my tone. "26," he said.
Two things were for certain: One, I couldn't make eye contact with Greg or I might break into a nervous laughter. And two, I felt like my world had just come to a crashing halt, and I wasn't happy about it one bit.
Tune in tomorrow, gentle readers, as I continue and complete this tale. Also, if you have any interesting roommate stories, send them to ptklein@gmail.com. This could easily be a FUF in itself I believe.
2 comments:
I bet that no one can top this! My first roommate at UCLA - yes, I went to UCLA, too - was my best friend since elementary school. We went through Jr. High and High School together. We were best of friends! We slept at eachother's homes, went to campt together - she was also a bridesmaid in my wedding. She is now Amber's second "stepmother"
YourLovingM-I-L
I had a roommate once. For most of the time I had a room that was down the hallway from his. We had to share the same bathroom, kitchen, video game system and phone line. He was left-handed too, so I always had to give him the aisle seat at restaurants. As he got older he developed this annoying obsession with words and grammar. Then, he got interested in drama and his offbeat sense of humor really flourished. This went on for over 18-years. In all he was not too bad of a roommate. I am just glad that we finally stopped sharing bunk beds.
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