Roomies

Whenever I hear roommate stories, they usually sound something like this:

What is this Feeling? - Wicked

Fortunately for me, loathing is not a feeling I hold for the majority of the roommates I've had. Out of 7 roommates, I'm still good friends with 5 of them (that's a decent track record, if you ask me).

I remember anxiously checking the mail everyday, looking for that fated dorm assignment letter. When I finally got it, it said my roommate was from Hickory, NC. Because of her hometown's name, I immediately pictured an overall-wearing hick (not that wearing overalls means you're a hick, nor are hicks necessarily bad things). It turns out, she was a lot more like me than I ever expected. A few minutes after shooing our parentals out of the room, we went shopping and immediately started bonding over things like Aerosmith.

I was NOT the ideal roommate. I had way too much stuff for our tiny space, and I was about as messy as messy could be. There were also countless nights where I'd keep her up until 5 in the morning, clacking away to finish a paper for class, raiding the fridge, or IMing with my FL friends. If it ever bothered her (which I don't know how it wouldn't have), she never made it known. And more than that, she became a great friend. She was my "wing man" when I wanted to "get to know" the boys upstairs, she dished as good as I gave (taking my clothes when I was in the shower... of course, I think I had the last laugh when she found a naked me knocking on our door), she helped me get both into and out of trouble (let's just say there was a broken door and a security guard involved one night), and she was there with a hug and a sympathetic ear during the good and the bad. I definitely lucked out. Well, that year, anyway...

There was one roommate (whose rooming assignment I was responsible for, and trust me, my other two roommates still won't let me forget it) who provided us with hours of entertainment. It was the end of my freshman year at UNC Charlotte, and my friend from high school, my freshman roommate, and I wanted to live in an on-campus apartment. The only catch was that these apartments housed four, and there were only three of us. Rather than tempt fate with a luck-of-the-draw roommate, we decided to try to find a fourth musketeer on our own. After several weeks, I decided that my friend from one of the organizations I was involved in would be the perfect fit. And you know, for a while she was. Her quirks - from eating Spice Girl lollipops and displaying the enclosed stickers on her closet door, to her southern twang changing to a thick NY accent when she got mad, to her Hello Kitty obsession - were endearing. What wasn't quite as charming is when she started having sex in our communal shower (she had no idea why we were so bent out of shape about it) and thought we needed to see pictures of her sexcapades (as if we couldn't hear her ass knocking down the blinds and use our imaginations). To add insult to injury, I - the person who brought said roommate into the mix - dropped out mid-year and left my other two roomies to fend for themselves (sorry, ladies).

Truth be told, I sometimes miss the whole roommate thing. There was always someone to talk to, share a tray of cookies (or a jar of pickles) with, and drag to the mall. And now these days, in the words of Monica from Friends, "I have to live with a boy!"