At home you were a veritable feudal lord; sucking the sweet teet (monetary and
otherwise) of your parents’ labor, contributing nothing other than the simple glory of
your presence.
Times change.Welcome to college Little Lord/Lady Prissy Pants.
Neither mommy nor daddy is around to praise
your every little burpey and sneezey, to hoist your
diaper like it was the Stanley Cup. The endless
rolls of quilted-quadruple-ply have wilted to a
solitary single ply of recycled sandpaper, and like
that single ply, you are all alone.
Well … sort of.
Now, above you, under you, or maybe a few coarsely carpeted
feet from you and your musty, ambiguously stained mattress is
a total stranger, an unknown quantity of uncertain value. This
stranger will be privy to your first triumphs and failures in the
opening stages of your bold scramble towards adulthood. This
stranger will know the rhythmic pattern of your snoring, gauge
the frequency with which you do your laundry, and see you
naked; a witness to your million idiosyncrasies, a personal
anthropological profiler, in a word – a roommate.
Of course, there is the chance that your roommate will become
your best friend, the two of you can go skipping, hold hands and
giggle around campus in the golden light of dusk; the long
shadows spelling out ‘BFF’ on the grass. But it’s far more likely that
sharing your living space with the one picked by bureaucratic
decree will be something less than ideal.
It is with this harsh knowledge in mind that Campus Circle
presents a partial guide to roommate types; not so much to solve the various
tiffs, squabbles and crises that arise from living with a stranger, but as a source of
commiseration – just so that you know; you’re not alone.
THE DOPPELGANGER
The Doppelganger’s problem is
not a lack of interest in you, or a
lack of willingness to compromise on basic roommate issues. In fact
the Doppelganger is typified by just the opposite. The Doppelganger
wants to BECOME you.
The clothes you wear, the music you listen to, your haircut, the way
you speak; the Doppelganger is an
eerily quick study of all things you.
At first, this can be enormously
gratifying to your ego, after all,
you’re cool and hip and worthy of
worship. Right?
But what seems like a harmless
and flattering hetero-crush can
quickly move into more frightening
obsessive-weirdo territory. How will
the Doppelganger take to your
significant other, or react when you
distance yourself socially? Next
thing you know, you wake up at 5
a.m. and the Doppelganger is
staring at you wide eyed and naked,
save for a pair of your shoes he/she
had complemented you on earlier in
the day. Awkward.
THE PURITAN
The Puritan can be a workable
roommate as long as a silence pact
can be enforced regarding the three
subjects: substance abuse, sex and
religion. The Puritan smugly knows
him or herself to be better than you
because of a total ignorance of the
first two, and a supreme mastery of
the third.
Any time you return from a
night of chugging, groping or any
other typical collegiate shenanigans,
you can expect the Puritan to still be
up. Greeting you with a scowl and a
pamphlet, he or she will profess why
evolution is wrong, why sinners are
going to hell, or why the series finale
of “Friends” was a sign of the
apocalypse (something to do with
Ross’ eyebrows).
If you can deal with the scorn,
the Puritan roommate is not
entirely bereft of advantage. If
there’s a bible study in your room,
there are sure to be cookies and soda
(decaffeinated of course). Perhaps
the best thing about Puritans is
that they keep their rooms as
immaculate as the conception – that
whole cleanliness equals godliness
connection. If you’re lucky enough,
you’ll have a spiritual confidante
and a maid.
THE SLOTH
When some young men enter
college, they take their new found
freedom as reason to rebel against
every arbitrary limitation placed on
their former lives by overbearing
parents, reacting to a subconscious
cataloguing of slights dating back to
their toddler years. In a fit of Freudian
emotional displacement, the recipient
of the Sloth’s passive aggressive wrath
is not his control hungry parents, but
you, his give-a-shit roommate.
While living at home, the Sloth
had to be in bed at 10 p.m. sharp, but
now that mom and dad aren’t
around, the Sloth keeps almost
nocturnal hours. His eyes fixed to the
TV or some video game that he wasn’t
allowed to play until after he had
finished his homework.
And as for homework – he
doesn’t do it anymore, he needs those
daylight hours to rest up for another
night spent in his online fantasy
world; eviscerating goblins like they
were his father’s lack of affection. The
Sloth can be endearing when he goes
to the dining hall (his three bowls of
sugar cereal for every meal) but
insufferable and may be nauseating
when he refuses to shower on any
regular schedule or leaves his toenail
clippings on top of the mini-fridge
THE DRUGGIE
The best thing about living with the Druggie is that the drugs will be
plentiful and cost effective, which is >
also the worst thing about the
Druggie as roommate. Just like the
substances he proffers, dealing (so to speak) with the Druggie is a matter of
personal tolerance If you can stand all the talk
between bong hits, all about how weed is a gift from the Earth Mother,
how it helps with engineering homework and how the world would
be better if Osama Bin-Laden and
George Bush would just share a blunt
together (like – a huge one), then
you’ll have some interesting stories for
your future children to go along with
your considerable buzz now.
Unfortunately, the good times can’t last forever, and living with the
Druggie is an arrangement of steadily diminishing returns.
Although it might seem nice at first to have a constant stream of
“friends” coming in and out of your
dorm room, when it’s 5 a.m. during
finals week, it’ll be those same
“friends” bloodying their knuckles
banging on your door, and that same
damn Bob Marley compilation
playing at ear pillaging volume for
three weeks. You can’t take a shower
because it’s being used as a meth lab,
and you can’t even turn off your desk
lamp to sleep because it’s been boobytrapped
with a surplus hand grenade
from the Korean war. Then, maybe,
just maybe, living with the Druggie
will seem like a bad idea.
THE BETROTHED
In principle, there is nothing
wrong with young love. The first
twinges of real youthful love activate
latent systems of mental and physical
response, fashioning a sensory world
of revelatory delight. To be young
and in love is natural and beautiful,
but to witness the young love of
others from across your cramped,
poorly ventilated room in a high rise
dormitory is disgusting and possibly
traumatic.
The Betrothed is so caught up in the radiant glow of love that all norms
of consideration and propriety are left
behind like the generic Planned
Parenthood condom wrappers that
will fill your waste bin. As roommate,
you will be the begrudging witness to
the stinking and slurping blossoming
of the Betrothed’s love.
It’s not just the sex stank that will
be obnoxious, but the lounging and
caressing on the tiny bed as if you
weren’t there, the breathy giggling
over ‘lover’s only’ jokes and the late
night phone calls in hushed tones.
Fortunately for you, what starts in
private ecstasy always ends in public
hallway yelling matches, and maybe
half a semester with a docile, depressed
and above all considerate
roommate – before the happy couple
reunites.