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Editor's note

By Matt Hirschfeld

Thursday, February 5, 2009

It was my first semester living with roommates out of the dorms. I’d lived by myself for a semester, and an opportunity for some summer roommates at a cheap price opened up. It was just two months of co-habitating with three girls. What could go wrong?

A few qualms about unwashed dishes and laundry arose in the first couple of months, but nothing that wasn’t solved with some tough love.

The dried food-infested dishes weren’t, of course, mine, and I refused to wash them. I worked my way around the kitchen, avoiding the mess at all costs, and the roomies finally cleaned the only after they resorted to spooning cereal out of coffee mugs with serving spoons. Passive-aggressive on my part? Maybe, but it still didn’t have to lift a finger to clean up their mess.

I approached the laundry situation in a tad differently. It was inherently impossible for the roomies to remove their wet laundry from the washer and transfer it two feet to the right and into the dryer. If it did miraculously make it to the dryer, it didn’t make it to their rooms. Even after a dozen friendly reminders, nothing changed. So once, when the wet laundry stayed in the washer for more than 24 hours, I scooped it out and sloppily placed the drenched clothes in the middle of their bedrooms. It wasn’t quite eye for an eye, but I settled with sloppy for sloppy.

I eventually had to deal with the hair in the shower situation, I was teetering on the edge of considerate sanity. I shared a bathroom with one of the roomies, and understood that most girls had much longer hair than me. After each her showers, though, you would have thought she sheared a sheep in there. She was much more understanding, though, than with the dish and laundry situations, and she cleaned it the best she could. I never really inquired how she did it, but it got done and that’s all I cared about.

I witnessed how she did it once, and it will forever be burned into my now-traumatized memory. I was in the bathroom with her and casually mentioned the wool sweater than was forming at the bottom of the drain. She obliged and grabbed her toothbrush. She headed for the drain, and I yelped an uber-dramatic, slow-motion “NOOOOOOO”s. She told me to relax—she was going to use the handle, not the bristle end. As if this was going to calm me down, I turned away in disgust, grabbed my toothbrush, and stormed out of the bathroom.

Take a look at Kristopher’s Out & About on page 15 for more disgusting and cringe-worthy stories from KU students about their past and current roommates.

She tried to show my the Yeti that she pulled out of the recesses of our shower. I declined. And I also kept my toothbrush out of harm’s reach in my room for the rest of my time in the apartment.

Comments

lenexamom (anonymous) says...

Nothing changes! I also lived with three girls in the first floor apartment of a 100-year-old house in Manhattan, Kansas in 1978. All of us got along fine with the exception of one roomie who insisted on buying her own food because she had such weird hours and was picky about what she ate. That lasted maybe a week then we noticed our milk had disappeared just in time for morning breakfast. We noticed more missing food when it escalated to eggs, bread, cheese then meat and soda. That was bad enough but she worked late and would come home and cook at 2:30 in the morning. Believe me, nothing smells good at that hour. We would get up in the morning and find a sink full of dirty dishes-sometimes there were so many we had to wash them in order to eat breakfast. We finally told her we had it and she had a week to repay our food and clean-up after herself or she would be asked to leave. She did straighten up but she was not easy to live with after that. I vowed never again with a roommate and I didn't until I got married. He does dishes!!

February 5, 2009 at 9:01 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

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