roomates - 1st year - sound & silence - pt 4of4

 

There were things that went on that were beyond what I can remember about the little moments when my roomates didn't notice that I was there and they dropped their shields while talking to friends. There was a lot of empathy despite my threats and grumpiness from lack of sleep and school induced stress. Not that I'd want to betray that trust though nor take photos like this spiteful person did of their room-mate's mess - I can only say some of mine were messier. I was lucky as I could have had nightmare room-mates like my friends bemoaned.


Room-mates who stole stuff, made way worse messes then my nose would have been able to deal with. Other friends in dorm had murderous thoughts about stereo systems fueling dance parties late into the night. They liked and used my pre-tested solution of playing opera and polka early the next morning in retaliation to their neighbours.


They were lucky compared to the people who thought dorm was a place to test out their wrestling skills. Someone got put through a wall head-first, was okay other than concussion and stitches, but refused to pay the damage deposit fine imposed by dorm. Other people on dorm had angry pizza delivery guys to deal with after prank calls, angry neighbours when they couldn't control their room-mates.

Worse, others had to steer clear of recently ex-boyfriends and ex-girl-friends after bad break-ups or loud make-up sex that didn't heal the wounds. That and creepy people who tried to follow their room-mates home from the bar. Compared to the guys who had bike races and foot-ball games down my hallway, I couldn't complain. Or the huge dorm party which resulted in all the furniture being piled into a fortress in common areas.


Or the fire-drills because someone was 'cooking' hot-dogs stoned and forgot about smoke if they passed out at 3 a.m. or lit candles for a relaxing bath which became less relaxed when candles started to burn through the counter. Not that fire extinguishers were left alone, one was shot off and into the vents and again we were evacuated while maintenance and fire fighters ventilated the dorm.


Other people forgot to ventilate the bathroom hot-box properly and in lighting up the bong and light the smoke alarm as well. This was at least once a month in the -30C. I got very efficient at loading my camera bag and laptop and leaving the building from pajamas to clothes in 30 seconds flat in case it was the real thing finally.

However, the night Halo-boy, a few friends and I re-organized the common-room was my fondest memory of the first year of dorm. For all the assignments, I was allowed to relax once in a while and partake a drink or three. Never again with Royal Reserve and I apologize to my liver for that night.

Appleton, RR and Lucky's beer aplenty, we had a great time. Emo-boy whined so much but we had a great time. Nobody took credit for the first move, but by the time Emo-boy arose in the morning, I thought he was playing more screa-mo for the amount he yelled. We were pretty happy with the new decorating style.

Sitting on a side-ways easy chair, I was calmly watching cartoons and eating kraft dinner mac & cheese, head cocked to the side. Non-flat-screen TV, chairs, table, small appliances, lamps, even posters were all side-ways.


For extreme make-over, Martha Stewart would have been proud. I was a lot less proud thinking about it now, but there's something metaphoric about said about the whole dorm lifestyle -- sometimes it just goes sideways for a curve-ball so keep on trucking.

If this says anything about why I decided rum shouldn't be on my diet in such plentiful amounts, I learned my lesson. Come to think of it, by second year I was a lot more calm about assignments, no less busy, but less in the drinking.


Second year was much more orderly in comparison as I was blessed with a much more sane bunch of dorm room-mates who got along much better. However, that's a different story for a different day. Hope you enjoyed ^_^

roomates - 1st year - sound & silence - pt 3of4

As you may notice, this isn't the easiest stuff to write about, yet my retired writer friend dearly departed, challenged me to find the humour in these situations, so I'll keep it up in his memory.

Anyhows... Emo-boy wasn't the one who swabbed the decks. Note the plunger attempt.

Finding a friend to stay with, Artsy-wino had enough after first term and his replacement in the dorm was even more crazy fun. Halo-boy was a piece of work, hot-boxing up the bathroom with Emo-boy, playing massive amounts of Halo while he was 'working' on assignments and drinking Lucky beer by the 18 pack.

Having cousins from  Vancouver Island where Lucky is brewed and affectionately called redneck champagne, I'm used to bone-head drinking and yelling, but having to write assignments and edit photos was a bit more than I can handle over the racket of Halo-boy and Emo-boy in a cage match of yelling over who got the TV for playing video games.

If I had a major amount of assignments to finish, the cable connection for the TV to Xbox went missing and then screa-mo would have been a nice sound in comparison. At least it was a truce.

Halo-boy was okay with this as his assignments were almost as many as mine. He still found plenty of time to shoot up Halo online or cook hamburger helper while drinking Royal Reserve Rum. He clean up the kitchen well enough and loved the idea of stacking Emo-boy's dishes.

Then came the night Halo-boy plugged the toilet. The flooding of water awash through the common area was the first hint that all was not right. Neither was him yelling at the toilet. I yelled back that the toilet was on strike from lack of fiber in his diet.

Never met someone who couldn't use a plunger. Halo-boy thought they were for scaling buildings. Suction cups work on a similar principle but as I explained the physics, he was fascinated.


'Physics are so cool! I always just let gravity do its thing if I didn't have a cherry-bomb around.' I'm not making that up and wonder how Halo-boy survived his mother's wrath.


Emo-boy was already flipping out as he heard the word cherry bomb mentioned. His room was next to the bathroom and we both threatened to shove his head in the toilet but it was already full. Halo-boy and I got along well enough.

That was probably the worst we could come up with, yet Emo-boy thought it was hilarious as long as he didn't have to clean it up. An odd combination of swearing, laughing and screa-mo but at least he was smiling, ish. What we put him through next was much worse...

To be continued.... madness pure madness which I hope strikes a chord and someone out there gets some insight to what happens when cabin fever hits room-mates during long Canadian winters.

roomates - 1st year - sound & silence - pt 2 of 4

So continues the madness.

Now artsy-wino was a good kid in comparison but far from perfect. Not the best nickname, but I haven't seen a lot of classy drunks in college like that. I was sad to see him go when he moved out after first term because he kept Emo-boy quiet-er. Well almost sad.

He drove me nuts watching American Idol, MTV Cribs and Languna Beach, three shows I thought I'd never hear the end of the way he idolized the Cali-life-style. His artsy political rants and self-pity that his work wasn't good enough yet didn't help either.

I asked how anyone could not be shot for being so tone-deaf and ruining classic songs and Artsy-wino said to back off because they worked hard to get there. It'd be easier if they hadn't started singing....

How could teens live off their parents like credit-cards would burn a hole in the pocket? Who could be so shallow down in Long Beach when their neighbours were dying of over-doses or working triple-shifts to support their families? Artsy-wino said the perfectly tanned teens weren't perfect either, they had relationship problems and troubles in school with drugs and alcohol.

'You don't know what it's like to have those kind of troubles or have a tortured artist's soul.' He was a pretty talented artist too so I didn't get it.

He was half-right but I was a peer-drug counselor after high-school so I told him a few stories to shut him up about teens worse off. Plus I've lots of artists who don't have thumb-screws embedded but he was still finding his artist style which is brutally hard to be original.

Yet talking about crack-users' relationships caused him to blow up like a screa-mo 'singer'. This was normal - he yelled at his artwork, politicians on TV, and Emo-boy - but this was worse. He had gotten straight after been into the XTC and speed at the clubs, but the crack was the worst he had ever seen go down. He was 20 years old barely and dealing with that already for years? Had a bit more sympathy for him but other than artistic passions which we debated over wine and cheese, we didn't have much in common.

Not much in common with artsy-wino, other than his sweet little girlfriend who used to wander in. If he wasn't home, I'd make her a cup of tea and she'd complain about Artsy-wino, her mother, and everything else that sucks when you're 20 years old. She was about the same age as my sister so it was pretty easy to listen and offer advice or a hug.

Arsty-wino was surprisingly okay with this as he was really possessive about her otherwise, but didn't have time to listen all the time when his brutally mark-heavy portfolio was due and she understood this. People who put up with artists are incredible for many reasons, especially when said artist breaks down. So it was hard on her at times when he was being mopey. 

Don't think he could keep ranting or moping with her around. When his patient gal was pretty cute about jumping on Artsy-wino's bed if he took too long to finish his work or dance a sock-hop up with us. As couples go, she was ying for his yang and they were pretty balanced fun. We had fun mocking American Idol wanna-bes and talking about philosophical and political subjects. 

Which is more than I talked about with my third roomate, Silence as I never saw him. I think since he might well have been closet gay, he never chose to hang out around where my other two roomates yelled homo at each other and all other kinds of gay insults. It was messy, but I felt bad for the kid to have to put up with so much screaming.

He'd come out swearing and throw stuff if he got mad enough once or twice, but not often. I'd let him just rip into my shocked other two roomates because it was good for some stress to defuse. He stormed out a lot with friends who looked after him better.

Playing my happy ska and reggae full-blast lessened the stress and defused the hate, but I never got to really know the kid, stop my roomates from yelling homo, so it was a bad scene. Most of the time we forgot Silence was there and would pound on the door once a week to make sure he wasn't dead we saw him so rarely.

With so much stress, I started to think God had sent me to look after them. All I had to do was keep the peace, keep place tidy enough and tempers wouldn't flare for too long. I thought after Christmas it would get a bit easier with a new roomate moving in. Was I wrong?

To be continued....


p.s. How did I survive? Laundry night helped... when my room-mates were getting too loud as the weekend started, I'd go down with a few loads of dirty clothes and straighten out my articles and notes. Even studied in the laundry room and met cool people there too.

roomates - 1st year - sound & silence - 1of4

Without much in the way of defense of male testosterone when the cruel experiment of throwing four random strangers into a single dorm suite without any warning.

Having moved to a completely new city and life to attend Journalism school. May have become socially tipsy, but I met lots of interesting people all over the dorm.

Homesick, worried about a huge amount of work, even just heart-broken from a summer romance, it was a great mix with Appleton Rum and cheap Albertan Big Rock Beer. Made up for it by drinking a lot of water and exercising when I could.

Wrote articles sobering up like Hunter S Thompson and interviewed amazing people, some of them still sobering up around dorm. It was good fun but I can't say that my own company at home was perfect.


An old sports-writer who lived in my neighbour-hood in Victoria roared with laughter when I related these tales, so I write after his encouragement and to honour his sense of humour as he's now writing in Heaven.

To avoid them grief and slander, I'll call them by their nicknames, Emo-boy, Artsy-wino and Silence. It was an odd match-up to say the least. Halo-boy came in for re-enforcement part way through the year, but it was a strange discord to be sure.

'What's wrong with you? Why is this place so messed up? I'm going to my room....' And tortured cats yeowling of guitars, dying singers and heavy bass would emit from the room at all times of day and night. Emo-boy had three CDs it seemed, all of them screa-mo. Which is exactly what they sounded like, screaming and emo crying.

Guess when he'd play them? To wake up to first thing in the morning or to drown out our request to turn it down. Artsy-wino threw one CD out the window eventually and would have repeated the process if Emo-boy hadn't started up exactly like his CD sounded.

You might think I'm being harsh, although he might have been a nice kid, he left home and didn't know how to cook, clean, look after himself because he was too busy moping around. Maybe because I had a reserve navy officer for a father, but chores and swabbing the deck were expected, non-negotiable.

Having dishes pile up and mold, floors go un-vacuumed or washed in the common room, and really, I didn't know how he managed to sleep in his room, let alone breathe from locker room smell. He'd stumble hungover into his pots and dishes when I got tired of it and piled them two feet high in front his door every once in a while.

Consequentially an amazing squeal of whining at 6AM over-powered the screa-mo music blaring. He'd pound on my locked bedroom door, still whining. Without rolling out of bed, I'd issue standard threat that I had the phone number of Emo-boy's mother and would call about the mess. Knowing I met her when he moved in, he didn't want find out if I was bluffing so sulked back to his room.

Artsy-wino was similarly tired by half-way through the term and made me breakfast in thanks because he was so sick of Emo-boy as well. I wouldn't have been so harsh if he did anything besides play video games and whine about classes. I wish I was 18 years old again.

To be continued.... stick around for this four part series of weird-ness and fun coping with madness.


-- PLR --


p.s.


To put it nicely, it wasn't perfect, but I was too tired to care after working long on articles and delicate issues, so here's some of the back-story of why dorm-life was so strange some days. Emo-kid graduated and was doing well last I randomly met up with him.