Roommates and Roaches

Watch out, you might get what you're after,
Cool baby, strange but not a stranger.
I'm an ordinary guy,
Burning down the house.

Hold tight, wait 'til the party's over,
Hold tight, we're in for nasty weather.
There has got to be a way,
Burning down the house.

~The Talking Heads 

So, this week I will be talking about some of the different types of roommates that one might come across. Maybe some of you have an eternal roommate that fits into one of these categories. Choose your love, love your choice. Although sometimes we do not choose our roommates--they just propose to us. Or something like that. Since starting college, I have had 49 roommates. All have been male. This is actually much higher than I thought (The number, not the gender). Let's hope I can push it up to 50 in the next five years, maybe in a 49-1 gender distribution.

Let me clarify that unless specifically noted, the roommates listed here are not necessarily roommates I personally have had.  If you actually were my roommate at one point, perhaps you will know some of these people. Please, please, do not think that I am trying to call you out. We do not need another Carly Simon moment. I also have realised that some roommates I have had could fit into several of the categories (Right now I think I have a guy in mind that could fit four distinct categories. Wow.)

A few of these will admittedly require a rather pronounced understanding of the code names. This will especially be true on the one about the roommate who had no concept of personal property. Because Kappa is with Lambda, but his name is Clifford, but Clifford is not his real name and is not to be confused with the Kappa Prime, because that's a woman (I think) who liked Alpha Andy. And all of that makes perfect sense.


The Chef. One phrase: London Broil. For some of us, that says it all. Picture multiple crock pots full of beef, smothered in fresh garlic and spices. But  I will say this, the dude only made one bad meal in his life. Cinnamon and broccoli just do not make a good match. I could tell hundreds of stories about "The Chef," but that would be a post in and of itself. So I will summarize it with just a few phrases: "Rice and chicken," "The Hog's on the couch," "Forgive us for our hubris," "The microwave is melting." I probably should also mention hiding in the back rooms to avoid the wrath of The Chef in his task master role.

The Kid. This is a roommate that was still learning the halls of the local junior high when you were in college. This is a roommate who does not know who Monica Lewinsky is because he was born after "that" happened. And O.J Simpson? That's Homer's older brother, right?

The Lover. This is a common type of roommate. A man with an oft-knocking woman. Some people do the whole girlfriend thing well. Others don't. These latter group sometimes break your couch. I will spare you the details. All I can say is Sink Girl sank our couch. I have also had roommates who handle the lover life well.* They managed to realise that I sometimes wanted to use the kitchen or the living room. And I did not have to feel like I was a chaperone for a chimp in heat on Animal Planet.

The Chatter. This roommate is a subcategory of The Lover. Specific to the Chatter is the fact that his lover lives in another time zone and he somehow thinks it will be a good idea to stay up until 2 a.m. getting chatty with her on "MSN Messenger." (You can know that this was not The Kid by the fact that he used an IM to talk to his girlfriend). And he did not even end up marrying the girl. This is usually how it is actually.

The Bad Boy. Avoids going to most ward activities, including "FHE" (which I'm pretty sure stands for Freakishly Huge Entertainment, but I haven't found that in the handbook yet). One time this roommate did not reach quota for dating and did not feel remorse about it. (Awful, I know!) For good measure spilled an entire Crock-Pot of barbeque pork in the corner and stained the carpet red. Nothing could get the stain out. They even tried Bon Ami. Good thing we have couches that can be moved to cover the stain. 

Mr. Chicken and his ghost.

The Trapper. This is the type of roommate that goes to bed and locks the bedroom so you cannot get in. Half of the time you wonder if he even is in school. Then he gets a subpoena from the California Department of Justice, but you realise he has fled the country. At least he found his ham sandwich and a wife.  

The Beavers. These are not roommates, but rather friends of a roommate. The beavers come unannounced and must spend the night dammed up in a pile in your front room, blocking even the simplest of tasks. These large toothed friends usually hail from a university up north and smell of burnt wood. (Possibly from a burned dam?) The reason why these second hand roommates are called beavers is lost to history. 

The Bulldog. "I like power lifting. A lot." That sums it up. Picture a dude that can dead lift 600 lbs and sits in the front room in short pants. Drinks a lot of protein shakes and "whey." Moonlights as a security guard. He did smile one time. The San Antonio Spurs had just won the NBA title. The smile was short lived. Maybe it was his inner Tim Duncan.

The Keeper. This one is sort of like The Bulldog. The main difference is location. The Bulldog spent his time in the front room on the couch, whereas The Keeper spent most of his time in his room. I was home one time for an entire day (foot injury) and The Keeper literally went from 6:30 am (or earlier) until 8 pm without using the bathroom or coming out of his room. And we lived on the third floor and faced the main road, so he was not going out of the window (in either sense). We called this guy The Keeper as a shortened form of "The Keeper of the Chamber of Secrets." There was another time that we had not seen the guy for...a while, so we opened his door to see if he was dead. This literally was what we thought. We though we had become "those roommates" that let a guy die because we did not check on him enough. But he was just fixed on a video game--and had been in there for 24 straight hours as far as we could determine.

The Farmer. There once was a boy named Shmuck. He had a farm--a server farm. It caused a massive power bill. To the tune of $200 for the month of June. Shmuck and his server farm.

The Parasite and his trawler. Is it a common practice to wrap your lover up in the blankets from your roommate's bed? I didn't think so. But there he was, The Parasite, in the blankets from someone else's bed. With his girlfriend. Trawling along the Bayou. Eating seafood he was not ready to pay for. The Parasite once let Santa Claus sleep in his roommate's bed when he was away. The Parasite also used my towel a few times, so I exchanged it with a towel I used to clean the toilet. All I can say is that old habits are hard to break and somehow that towel ended up wet after he took a shower.

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*Although, the week before they got married also proved rather difficult in the furniture department: Evenings usually consisted of them telling jokes from the back of LaffyTaffy wrappers, followed by collapsing onto the floor in a fit of hysterics. I only had to administer oxygen once or twice. #EngagedPeople