The tale of two crazies

This past weekend I went to Party Kel’s little sisters’ grad party. The Noodle graduated from college and Ween graduated from high school. While we were all sitting around talking, I asked Ween about her living situation for the fall. She told me she was signed up to live in the freshmen dorms, but was apprehensive about having a random roommate. I told her I was sure she would be fine and that I was the only person I knew with a bad roommate experience.

My freshman year, I lived in Warren Towers at Boston University. It is the largest non-military dorm in the U.S.A. How do I know this? Because they tell you EVERY chance they get as if that is the coolest fact they have about BU. The dorm was large though. It had three eighteen story towers connected with a cafeteria.

Warren Towers

When you were assigned a dorm, they also assigned you a roommate and provided you with their contact information so you could get to know each other and to coordinate the purchase of a mini-fridge, etc. I started exchanging emails with my soon-to-be-roommate, Mary. She even sent me a picture of herself. She seemed like a really sweet and cute looking Texan. I was excited to get to know her.

I arrived at school a week early to participate in BU’s FYSOP (First Year Student Outreach Project). In addition to the benefit of getting to move in before everyone else, I was also able to get to know incoming students like myself, all while doing community service around Boston. It was a really great experience. Mary was scheduled to arrive to school later that week, so I was excited to have the room to myself.

One day after my community service, I walked back into my room to see a family of strangers. I was completely confused because I didn’t recognize any of them, including the eighteen-year-old female who was my new roommate, Mary. She had sent me a picture of herself that was clearly one of her when she was years younger and about thirty pounds lighter. What kind of person sends an old photo of themselves? Did she think I wouldn’t notice? I mean I wasn’t trying to online date her. That, along with the fake that her four-person family drove, like the Clampetts, from Texas to Boston to move her in, were the first signs of many that there was something (off) about Mary.

It turned out Mary was a super Christian. By that I mean when I asked her what she liked to do on the weekends, she said she and her family liked to sit around reading the bible and discussing what Jesus was trying to teach them. She told me Jesus didn’t like it when I drank, because I was underage. Mary liked to sing Christian rock songs using her guitar and enjoyed wearing mismatching patterned socks on purpose because she thought it was “funny.” Yeah. The bizarre thing is even though Mary really loved Jesus, she let her boyfriend come and stay with us for over a week and sleep in her bed. He was fat, hairy, and sweaty and often sat around the room topless. I tried to be as MIA as possible that week.

As weird as she was, I didn’t have anything against her. She wasn’t a mean girl. I never even had an issue with her, until I found her online diary that had entry after entry of hateful things written about me. I confronted her and told her I didn’t feel comfortable living with her anymore. She had no argument and she moved.

At BU, if you move out of your dorm, you have to do a roommate swap. Mary moved into another dorm and switched with a girl who moved into my room. Mary was unkind enough not to even let me meet the girl before she moved in. While it was a bit annoying, I figured this girl could not possibly be worse than what I just went through.

Jessica* was a theater geek. She helped to design and create the costumes for all of the BU school plays and musicals. I actually really like musicals, so I tried to pretend like I wasn’t annoyed when she would incessantly sing show tunes out loud. My headphones came in handy a lot that semester.

Jessica was a really sweet girl. We didn’t have a lot in common, but I felt bad for her. Like me, she had had a really bad experience with her first semester roommate. I made sure to go out of my way to introduce her to everyone on our floor. My dorm floor was a really tight knit group that spent a lot of time together, so I wanted her to feel included. After a few weeks she was fitting in fine.

One weekend a large group of us went out of town for a local friend’s birthday. Jessica stayed back in the dorms. I forget what happened, but the night didn’t turn out as awesome as planned, so we ended up getting back to the dorms around 8:00am the next morning. I was hung over and exhausted and all I wanted to do was go to sleep. I walked into my room to find Jessica naked in bed with a guy I had been dating.  I never spoke to her again.

Needless to say, my freshman year roommate experience was the worst I have heard to date. I am just glad I ended up making some amazing friends at BU (love you 6&8 and AEPhi) who made my college experience amazing. I love you guys and thanks for everything. If it wasn’t for you all, I probably would have transferred. 

Congratulartions to my college roommate Jill on her recent engagement and congrats to The Noodle and Ween for graduating!


*This might not have been her name. To this day it was one of the worst experiences of my life, so I have tried to block her our completely.