The Myth of the Awesome Roommate
Tuesday, October 02, 2012Earlier today, I read this article about the 20 people you'll meet in your 20s on Thoughtcatalog.com, which is scarily accurate. Time after time I found myself nodding and muttering, "YES! That's (insert name of person I know)!" In fact, I've met all these people except for #19: The Awesome Roommate. I'm pretty sure The Awesome Roommate is a bit like Santa Claus and Bigfoot: as in, fictional, mythical, does not exist.
The Shitty Roommate can masquerade as The Awesome Roommate for a while. As with new jobs, new romantic relationships, or a new pair of jeans that fits just so and is that perfect shade of indigo, you go through a honeymoon phase where it's all wonderful and exciting and new and the best thing everrrrr. The Awesome Roommate is SO MUCH FUN! She's someone to sit on the bathroom counter and dye your hair unnatural colours with! She'll always drink homemade margaritas on random Tuesday nights in your sweatpants with Biore nose strips on! You go downtown, share a cab home at 3:30 a.m., cook chicken fingers and laugh over the night's shenanigans.
Time passes. Rent cheques are cashed. Things with The Awesome Roommate are still going pretty tickety-boo. You're still watching Grey's and Sex and the City together, borrowing each other's shoes for a night out, making pilgrimages to the dollar store to stock up on random shit to clutter up your apartment that costs a dollar. All good.
You have a particularly heinous work week, involving 12+ hour days and very early mornings. That same week, she's off "studying for exams". It would appear your roommate does most of her "studying" at Boner Library at the University of Penis because she's brought home three different guys in one week. You realize just how thin your bedroom walls are. You can't get in the shower because Fuckbuddy #2 is in there washing away his sins. You miss your bus, you're late for work, and just like that...it's the first chink in the Awesome Roommate armour.
You start noticing things you hate about your roommate. The way your ice cream sandwiches always go missing, for example. The way her coat always slides off the hanger, ends up on the floor of the front closet, and jams the closet door. The way that the guy she's currently banging is parked on your futon every.single.night. when you get home from work, watching stupid movies like Backdraft, and when you're heading out for a run one evening, he asks you, as you lace up your sneakers, "are you going to work on your thighs?" And she just sits there as if this is an OK thing to say to a slightly pear-shaped lady.
Someone calls your house in the middle of the night. It's a wrong number, yet instead of hanging up the phone your roommate pulls this poor bastard into a full-on conversation, and, an hour and a half later, there's a knock on the door. It's Wrong Number Man. What's that noise? They're hooking up? Amazing. Some dude called a wrong number looking for pizza and ends up getting laid out of it. Fabulous deal for him.
You go away for the weekend, come home, and ALL your food is gone: your ice cream bars, your precious Triscuits, your *good* cereal, your chocolate milk, all of it. You confront your Awesome Roommate, who tells you she had some friends over and one of them is bulimic and she must have gotten up in the middle of the night and EATEN ALL YOUR FOOD. "I think she was binging?" Awesome Roommate says in that simpering voice that makes you want to dropkick her back to Cape Breton.
Over the course of a year, Awesome Roommate has morphed into Shitty Roommate. You inform her in a snide voicemail message (because you're NEVER home anymore, because you can't stand to be in the apartment with her) that you won't be renewing the lease in July. You cancel the cable. You don't have to cancel the Internet because you've been stealing wifi from your neighbours for the past year.
Maybe an Awesome Roommate does exist - someone with good basic personal hygiene, someone who is tidy, someone who can be quiet when it's quiet time and fun when it's fun time, someone who won't steal food or bring home all manner of riffraff. I just haven't encountered one, just as I've never seen a sasquatch.
Over the course of a year, Awesome Roommate has morphed into Shitty Roommate. You inform her in a snide voicemail message (because you're NEVER home anymore, because you can't stand to be in the apartment with her) that you won't be renewing the lease in July. You cancel the cable. You don't have to cancel the Internet because you've been stealing wifi from your neighbours for the past year.
Maybe an Awesome Roommate does exist - someone with good basic personal hygiene, someone who is tidy, someone who can be quiet when it's quiet time and fun when it's fun time, someone who won't steal food or bring home all manner of riffraff. I just haven't encountered one, just as I've never seen a sasquatch.
16 comments
But in that scenario aren't you the awesome roommate?
ReplyDeleteI am the PERFECT roommate!
DeleteOh, memories. Quinpool Towers. Dirty, sketchy Quinpool Towers. Me and my best friend taking our first crack at living away from home. We had fun, but we were two totally different people and after one year, I decided I needed to live on my own.
ReplyDeleteI think Awesome roommates exsist, because I was one... Hehehe
At least you guys could get to Wendy's and Superstore without going outside :)
DeleteFunny you should say that, when writing that comment I had a flashback of all the times I ran to Wendy's for a loaded baked potato. It was even my breakfast some mornings! Oh, and yes, having an underground path to the NSLC was pretty great...
DeleteWell I'm here to tell you the Awesome Roommate exists! I've met not one but TWO of these mythical beasts! One was a girl I've known since high school, we were merely friendly acquaintances until one day we found ourselves both without a satisfactory housing situation. We decided to live together purely based on our similarly nerdy senses of humor and it was the most magical year and a half of my life. Living together proved we were actually quite different but we totally made it work. On Friday nights she would party elsewhere when she knew I had to be up at 6 for my job the next day. In return, I would make her and her friends food for their Sunday football parties. It was a beautiful arrangement. I actually cried when she moved out to go to grad school. Now that I’m back living with my parents for the time being, I desperately pine for those days...
ReplyDeleteOoh sounds like you got lucky! I'm glad there are Awesome Roommates out there! I didn't get into my first roommate at college, who decided to become a witch and had the cops bust into our house in the middle of the night because she and her friends were out stealing money out of vending machines...
DeleteThe awesome roommate. I've lived by myself primarily ever since moving out here to Skatch. I moved in with my current roommmate a couple years ago after living in an abomination of an apartment that I couldn't afford, after moving 3 hours away from where I was before, pretty much utterly broke. In a time when I felt completely alone in a new city, she kind of swooped in and saved me, in the corniest way I could express that. I had hesitations living with someone, because there is something to be said about living alone. But it's been great. She's quickly become one of my best friends. We do natter at one another, but in a sisterly way. We get over quibbles fairly quickly. haha. I could totally be a better roommate and strive to be every day.
ReplyDeleteUsually I find "awesome roommate" goes hand in hand with "awesome person." :)
That being said, I actually had pretty good roommates in university too, although there were some tense moments. :P
Seems like there are plenty of Awesome Roommates around! Guess I was just unlucky! I'm glad you're having a good experience!
DeleteSounds like your roommate was a big douche. If the boot-knocking wasn't enough, the food-stealing would push me over the edge. My roomie and I share the grocery bill, often cooking separately. There's no real over-lording with "oh hai, that's mine" unless I wolf down a bag of cookies... which I may have done recently. They are rare, the "awesome roommates", but it's just about respect really.
DeleteYou deserved much better than that.
oh this is so funny, I love it. I had an "OK" room-mate. She had a couple of undesirables for sleepovers but then so did I. We shared some food and Christmas wrapping and went out partying together. It was an "OK" period of my life but I was happy enough to move on to my own space after 6 months.
ReplyDeleteI think if we'd parted ways after 6 months it would have been "OK" too. And I mean, you can expect a little bit of foolish behaviour, everyone does it. But it was like once she got under my skin things just escalated so quickly! Sadly, I think if we'd never lived together we'd still be great friends. Living together does weird things!
Deletehehe...oh, I can picture the apartment and the roommate that you are talking about:)
ReplyDeleteAll "good" things must come to an end, right??!!
Haha I bet you can! It was good in the beginning. Ah well. Makes for some interesting stories :)
DeleteI wonder where that craptastic roommate is now? If she's still banging randoms and if an STI has finally made a home in her secondhand pants. I'm a terrible person. Sorry for ever introducing her to you!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure she's having a wonderful time wherever she is :) We would probably still be friends if I hadn't gotten to see all her gross ways in such up close and personal detail!! Funny story though the other day I found a notepad that was on our fridge and you had written her a to-do list and it was like, "wash box, test for possible pregnancy, get clap medication" etc and I roared.
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