The end of a roommate era

It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man

— Jack Handey

As previously mentioned, my semester in college is rapidly winding down, and today was my last day of real classes, although I still have several finals to take, so I’m not out of the woods just yet. However, this does mean that my time with my beloved roommate is quickly coming to an end (yes, that’s right, shockingly, I’m not rooming with him next semester). I’m taking this opportunity to reflect on the time that my roommate and I spent together, and the bond that never developed between us.

Of course, there’s the day we first met. What a touching day that was. For a full recount of that day you need only click here and you will be magically teleported to the day that I originally wrote the story, through the magic of the internet. For those of you who don’t want to go through this trouble, the cliff notes version is that I didn’t like him too much.

The one aspect about him that I did like was the fact that he was never actually in the room, and, thus, didn’t bother me too much. However, this tragically changed when he found out that his girlfriend had been cheating on him. Ok, lets stop right here for a quick quiz, what do you do when your girlfriend cheats on you?

A) You break up with her, mourn for about a month, and move on.

B) You gladly break up with her. Who needs her anyway? There’s plenty of fish in the sea.

C) You keep going out with her, because these things can be worked through, and it was probably your fault as much as it was hers.

D) You keep going out with her, and swear to bring violence to the poor bloke who did sleep with her, who had no idea she actually had a boyfriend, and heroically had the decency to tell you about having sex with her when he found out that she did.

If you answered D, then you have the mentality of my roommate, and I also am probably not very fond of you as a result.

The problem with solution D is that manhandling innocent civilians is against the law, and when you try and do it, you end up getting in trouble. So, basically, after starting a bit of a stir, my roommate got banned from the dorm his girlfriend lives in. Meaning, of course, that his girlfriend and he both lived in the room with me, seemingly with the sole purpose of making my life miserable, for the rest of the semester.

And what a long, miserable, semester it has been. Of course, there was that one bright point when I got to see him wail like a baby to his girlfriend when she tried to break up with him, but, that’s the sort of sinister pleasure that makes me feel guilty. Well, it SHOULD make me feel guilty anyway, and I end up feeling guilty about not feeling guilty, so there’s guilt there in the end. Still, ultimately, mocking my roommate’s pain was little consolation for spending the entire miserable semester with him.

However, while I may not have cared much for my roommate from the beginning (and even less as time went on), you diary readers likely adore him, since many diary entries were born out of my contempt for him. Without hardship there is no art, and without my roommate there would have been little diary.

And, while my roommate and I will likely never exchange Christmas cards, I think I learned an important lesson from him. I learned that those stupid, stereotypical people I see on MTV are not mere caricatures. They really exist in the world. It’s a harrowing lesson that I will not soon forget.