Caution: Very long.
How many “My life begins again” threads have I started? This is the latest one. Some of you know of the oppressive regime I lived under at my parents’ house. After I finished (passed, hooray!) my summer calculus class (figuring I would start cracking away at my extensive math reqs before I had to worry about rent, utilities, etc.), I broke the news to Pops, packed up all my stuff and moved in with the guy I’ve considered my best friend over the last year and a half. This happened a couple of weeks ago; I haven’t been posting to the Boards much at all because of all of the excitement going on. First I slept on the couch, then I slept on the floor in friend’s room (at the time he and I were the only ones living here) while I waited for the room he was going to move into to have its carpet cleaned, so that I could move into his old room. Lost yet?
Anyway, the carpet in the room he was going to move into was horrendous. We thought it was bad with stains and stuff, but it wasn’t just that–the carpet actually turned a completely different shade of color when it was cleaned. I swear it was several shades darker, all the way from corner to corner, and there was no reason to think that wasn’t the color it was supposed to be. Ugh. Anyway, the carpet got cleaned, he moved down there, I moved into his old room, and almost immediately started working at my school’s bookstore. Still had furniture waiting at the rents’ place, as I needed to clear out the roommate’s stuff from my new room before I had space for it.
While I was waiting for everything to get moved around, my own mess started accumulating in the room, because I had nowhere reasonable to put anything of my own (no furniture of my own to put it in!) and most of my stuff remained in boxes, including my Chemistry book (it’s my major and the class I’m in is the one that makes or breaks chemists). A girl I had met in the aforementioned Calculus class ended up over at the house; my roommate (an excellent cook, who learned from his brother, who himself has cooked for Ludacris’ and Evander Holyfield’s parties) prepared chicken curry and said I could invite one of my classmates/friends over to share it with us. Myself, this girl, and another girl from the same Calculus class are now in the same Chemistry class and lab partners; I invited both of them. The latter said she loved curry and would love to come but she had plans; the former said she hated curry but she’d like to come try it anyway. Well, what the hell–why not? If anyone could win her over to curry, it was my roommate.
So she came over and had dinner with us. Sure enough, she loved it. (As did I; I’d never had curry before.) The three of us had a lot of fun talking and laughing at the roomie’s crazy stories (I swear the craziest shit happens to him every day–he’s a freakin’ magnet for it–this comes into play later in this very OP). We talked about what a mess things were in the bedrooms because of all the stuff going on. She came back a couple days later to work on Chemistry homework with me and she mentioned that she liked to help her guy friends clean and organize their rooms. Not one to turn down such an offer, I got on my roommate’s ass to get the last of his stuff out of my room, and he did. He mentioned on the way that he really thought that girl was into me. I said, “Nah, no freakin’ way” and he said “Suit yourself, but I really think you got something there.” Then she came over again and helped me clean up my room and organize everything, and well, you put two attractive young Californians, who had been secretly thinking of each other throughout the summer, in a room together through the wee hours of the morning for a couple of nights in a row and wonderful things can happen. Nothing physical happened, but indeed I found out my crush was of the requited sort and a new relationship was started. And I had a clean room. Awesome! Got the furniture in, and now we’re working on the room again and about to finally unpack my stuff (and hopefully find that damn Chem book).
As a side note, I must mention that I have a formidable geeky side, which really comes out when I hang out with geeky people. Well, all of my roommates (a few others have moved in since I did) are Grade-A geeks; that combined with my having officially declared my major in The Hard Sciences means that I have entered full Geek Mode and there’s really no turning back. (Apparently that’s what attracted my now-GF to me in the first place, so it’s a good thing.) Anyway, we’re definitely a geek household–I’m trying to convince the Original Roommate not to put my Periodic Table poster up in the living room–and as such it’s worth noting that most of our Productive Time is focused on preparing for the imminent zombie attack. We have actual Army ammo boxes full of zombie defense gear lying around; we have a knife collection designed for short-range zombie fending-off, and I myself have acquired my own ZDA (Zombie Defense Apparatus), a switchblade that holds a standard razorblade that can be easily switched out, perfect for zombie defense because it can be “reloaded” with cheap and portable blades when necessary; we have the full Nutrisystem meal set, not because anyone’s trying to lose weight, but so that we have a non-perishable supply of disgusting but caloric food to tide us over during the zombie attack; we have rubbing alcohol, motor oil and lighters around in case we need to burn the zombies; we have an old clothes dryer which decided to switch its job description from “dry out contents” to “set contents on fire”*, which we can use in a last-ditch effort to incinerate the house after trapping the zombies in it (by throwing motor oil and rubbing alcohol into the dryer, of course); we have wine and hot sauce bottles we can break and use as stinging last-resort shank-weapons against the zombies. This all started when the local HOA sent a flyer to the house containing a map of the neighborhood and the dark and effective, if vague, warning, “Plan your escape!” Not having been informed what we were to plan our escape from, my roommate, like any good tenant, assumed that we were supposed to plan our escape from zombies. So when the zombies come, we’re fuckin’ ready.
Another aside. A couple of days ago, myself, my GF and Original Roommate were driving back to the house after obtaining our delicious Mexican dinners. Out of nowhere, OR in the back seat screams “OH MY GOD!” I replied, “What? What!? WTF?” He then said, “Remember that guy who was gonna move in right before you? The guy I showed around the house a little and he seemed OK, but I caught a weird vibe off him? I just realized he was that truck driver from a year ago!” I was bewildered for a moment and my GF, who hadn’t known either of us a year ago, was completely befuddled. Suddenly it hit me…
Flash back to the fall of 2005. The (now-)Original Roommate (then in town on vacation from a more northern locale), myself, and a mutual friend were driving around town between classes. We had just finished lunch and were heading back to campus when the mutual friend cut a truck driver off (we later found out that he, the mutual friend, wasn’t wearing glasses–I never knew he was supposed to, as I hadn’t seen him wear them in the almost year that I had known him. Sigh). The trucker started following us, so we took a few turns and went through some parking lots trying to shake him. We thought we’d lost him, so we pulled over on a curb so we could take a quick breather and let our heads cool. Lo and behold, the truck comes to a screeching halt in front of us. The driver of our car exchanges obscenities with the driver of the truck, and the trucker steps out and starts walking towards our car. We figured he was just going to do some point-blank hootin’ and a-hollerin’…and then he pulled out his freakin’ nine. Our driver freaked out, hit the gas and we spun out of there before the guy could fire off a shot. We got to campus without further incident, but HOLY CRAP, THE GUY TRIED TO KILL US DEAD!
And OR just realized that we were this freakin’ close to rooming with the guy who TRIED TO KILL US. Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot describe how surreal this is. Moving out has been a weird and exhilirating and exhausting process as it is. Imagine if that guy had moved in right before me, and the three of us were sitting around in the kitchen one morning; The Killer asks me for the milk, I open the refrigerator and grab the milk, and just as I’m about to hand him the carton I look into his eyes and freeze. I look from The Killer to OR to the milk back to the Killer back to the milk back to the Killer and in that instant all three of us realize that one of us had tried to murder the other two in cold blood. In that instant, I drop the milk, TK whips out his piece, OR and I wield our switchblades and the three of us gesture nervously at each other with our weapons for a minute, then a full-on battle scene ensues in the kitchen.
Wouldn’t that make a great movie? I’m trying to convince the Guy on the Couch, who’s a film producer with a degree from an esteemed state university, to consider adapting the story to film. I mean, it almost ACTUALLY HAPPENED. We really were close to rooming with the man who would be our killer. Who knows what crazy shenanigans would’ve ensued in the house? Wow! What an exciting few weeks.
- Yes, we also have a working dryer.