The Roomie Chronicles Numero Dos

Welcome back my friends and buckle up for the second installment of the living arrangements of Dickie. The first installment has received rave reviews and people seem to be finding it funnier than I expected. As much as I would love to keep patting myself on the back, I have part 2 of a blog to get to...

During University I rented an apartment during the summer with one of my good buddies from high school (later nicknamed "the Cougar Tamer" for his love of the older women). It was basically a summer of unadulterated retardedness. We're lucky we never ended up in jail or seriously injuring an innocent bystander. We didn't have any furniture when he moved in but my girlfriend had a friend with two old couches she wanted to get rid of. Fortunately she lived about half a kilometer up a hill from us. So the Cougar Tamer and I decided to carry these couches down the hill. Just try to picture two guys walking down a steep hill, each literally carrying a couch literally on his head. When that got uncomfortable we tried pushing the couch fast and jumping onto it  jamaican-bobsled-style. Seemed like a good idea at the time but when we got the couches to our apartment, that particular activity had wore the wooden legs almost completely off. It's funny how friction can be both a good thing and a bad thing...We ended up with two couches sitting directly on the floor in our apartment, but they fit in quite well with our "yardsale" theme. I had a summer job that I hated with a passion and the Cougar Tamer never met a drink he didn't like so we ended up going for drinks a lot. Luckily I had a girlfriend at the time to keep me somewhat under control. I was the best wingman ever. When you are in a relationship, women can just tell that you don't reek of desperation and are drawn to you. That is one of the unfair rules of life. Write it down and put that little tidbit of knowledge in your pocket for a rainy day, it's tried and true. I helped the Cougar Tamer meet many a lady that summer. He was a smaller guy (5'8, 140lbs), but he was a strong bugger. I remember us walking two ladies home one night and we were DRUNK. He ended up with one of the girls on his shoulders to prove how strong he was. I remember thinking to myself there was no way it was going to end well since it was just a matter of time before he or she, or both, fell on his/her face on the pavement. He swayed a lot and even stumbled a little, but to his credit he never dropped her. Luckily we only lived together for 4 months otherwise I would have needed a liver transpant.  Duration: 4 drunken months.

I ended up being roommates this guy (nicknamed "Teeder") that I worked with at a sporting goods store. We didn't really know each other well before being roommates, but it turned out surprisingly well. We were really quite different people, but we had just enough common interests to make it work. We were both a bit geeky, but in totally different ways. I was a jock and he was very respected in his scuba diving association. We spent many a night trying to solve the mysteries that surround the female lifeform. I seemed to have more luck with the ladies, but he had a freakish talent for pulling a homerun out of nowhere when you least expected it. That is what made it interesting when we went out to a bar or club. One such night was the legendary 'Oh You Like It Don't You???' night. Good times. I remember another time when Teeder and the Cougar Tamer were both battling over the attention of one particular lady. It was amusing watching each of their strategies being deployed. Teeder eventually ended up making out with the girl one night and almost certainly would have gotten further if he was not epically cockblocked by her annoying friend. Sadly he never reached that milestone again with the girl. Teeder was just an all around great roommate. It helped that we were both so easy going that we never really let anything get on our nerves. I remember Karaoke being a weekly occurrence. I remember him asking me one time what my secret to getting women interested was and I told him "Well this is the way I see it Teeder, if we both played a game of word association with the word "diving", you would answer 'Scuba' and I would answer 'Muff'. What do you think appeals more to women?". He had to agree with my reasoning. He had the last laugh though when he moved to Thailand and worked as a scuba diver for a tourism company. Duration: 2 years.

And that wraps up installment number 2 of the Roommate Chronicles. Tune in next time for the final installment where I cover my Toronto roommates. Remember that God loves ugly people too.

The Roomie Chronicles

I would assume that most of us have had the pleasure/frustration of living with someone else. It can be the best of times, it can be the worst of times. Things can happen that bond you forever and, conversely, make you sworn enemies until the end of time. I have had a decent number of flatmates through the years with both positive and negative outcomes, as well as just plain bizarre experiences. Here for your reading pleasure I will recount them for you...

Roomie 1 (then 2 and 3 as well) - Straight out of high school I moved in with a good female friend. We lived in the basement apartment with two very OLD people living upstairs. They tried to impart more rules on us than what we had when we lived at home. We lasted there 2 months before we moved in with two other female friends. Funny how at the time I didn't see how this situation could possibly go wrong... It didn't just go wrong, it went epically wrong and friendships were severed. What happened? One of the roommates decided it was a good idea to make up a totally untrue story about me and I did not take kindly to it once I heard about it. To this day I don't know where the story came from or the motive behind it. All in all, a very unpleasant experience. Duration: 2 months and then 6 months.

Roomie 4 and 5 - I lived with a girl I was dating as well as a mutual female friend. Good times were had, bad times were had but overall not a traumatizing experience. After the previous roommate situation, anything was a step up. Tons of parties. Duration: 8 months.

Roomie 6 - This was a girl I was head over heels in love with. We moved in together with the idea of really going the distance. We even got a puppy. We lived together for 2.5 years and unfortunately for me I didn't know ahead of time she was a certifiable lunatic. I described one of her antics (kicking me out of bed after having a bad dream about me) in detail in a previous blog. Things basically fell apart in the last year together when she told all her friends about how I was going to propose at Christmas, only she neglected to tell me this was going to happen. When Christmas came around and she did not receive her ring, things quickly unravelled. We actually split up a few months later. Duration: 2.5 years.

Roomie 7+ - In a hurry to get away from the ex I answered an ad in the university newspaper to sublet a room for the summer. I was desperate and I basically took the first place I went to look at. It was only for 4 months so I figured I could tolerate anything for that amount of time. I lived in the bottom part of a house with at least 4, but as many as 7, Chinese guys. I was like a prisoner of war living there. Imagine living in a place where you heard conversations all day and most of the night, but you had no idea what the hell they were saying. Try it some day by leaving the french channel on (and french is a much "less angry" sounding language) and you will have some iota what I went through for those 4 months. There was a HUGE bag of rice in the kitchen and I got to write my rent cheque out to "Kok Wai Wong" (say that to yourself) every month, so it did have its amusing moments.  Duration: 4 months.

Roomie 8 - I continued my tradition of making questionable living arrangements by answering an ad in the local newspaper looking for a roommate. We set up a time to meet at the apartment and I met my future roommate and her best friend. We got along really well (I got along exceptionally well with the best friend) and we agreed that I should move in. After I moved in things got a little bit weird. She gave me 1/4 of a cupboard and less than 1/5 of the fridge for my stuff (not a big deal but just weird). She was less than cordial, always seemed to be in a weird mood. The strangest part was that she went out of her way to be exceptionally friendly and nice to me when her best friend was over. It was like living with Jekyll and Hyde. I remember one particular night when I was watching TV on the couch, she brought home a guy at like 8pm. We didn't have any rules about having people over, I couldn't have cared less. The thing I had an issue with was when they sat on the couch beside me, then proceeded to make out for about 30 minutes. The guy actually hit me with his foot at one point. The best part was that her bedroom was about 10 feet away from the couch, but in her mind it was a better idea to stay there and dry hump the f*ck out of some random guy on the couch inches away from me. One day she came home and started to tell me a story of how her friend was looking for a place to live, I stopped her and offered "She can move in here!" and with that I put an end to a bizarre living arrangement. I ran into her months later at a pub and she came up to me all smiles, hugged me heartily and proclaimed me "the best roommate ever". I'm pretty sure she had multiple personality disorder. Duration: 3 months.

Roomie 9 - I jumped quickly into a place just up the road from Jekyll and Hyde. It was basically just renting a room, it was a very limited time solution. This brought "Shallow Hal" (appropriately named by my buddy Awall) into my life. Shallow Hal rented a room down the hall from me. To say he was a Sketchbag was insulting the word "Sketchbag" . He was in his 40's, usually wore tank tops and a sleeveless jean jacket and his face was the texture of worn leather. He just had this look in his eyes that screamed "I plan to sell all your stuff while you are at work". He kept trying to chat me up when we'd run into each other and I would always end up talking to him for a few minutes. One night I came home with a 6 pack of beer after a stupid day at work and I left the beer in the fridge to chill. I was literally counting down the minutes until I cracked open that first cold beer. I managed to hold off for an hour and then I went to the fridge to retrieve my cold beer only to discover it was gone. There are a few no-no's for people in my life, stealing my beer tops the list. The funny thing is that I am usually generous and I would have given him one if he had asked. It took me about 10 minutes to stop seething enough to knock on his door without fear of grabbing him by the throat. He took a solid two minutes to open his door and I asked him if he had any idea what happened to my beer. I could tell by the look on his face that he knew exactly what had happened to my beer, but he denied it all the while refusing to look me in the eye. I stormed away muttering another word for someone that performs coitus with a female parental unit. About 30 minutes of plotting his demise in my room, I heard his door open and then I heard the fridge door open and close. I walked out to the kitchen and looked in the fridge to discover my beer box with a lone beer left in it. Knowing that I had shamed Shallow Hal into not drinking ALL 6 of my beer was as comforting as you may think. Needless to say I did not stay living there very long. Years later I saw Shallow Hal pushing a shopping cart down the street and I had a great sense of karmic balance. Duration: One month. 

There are many more roomie stories, but I will end this blog here before it turns into a novel. I will continue the Roomie Chronicles in another entry. Stay tuned and remember that if you mess with my beer, you will end up homeless. I'm tight with the Universe like that.