Roommate Quirks

I have been reminiscing about my college roommate a lot lately.  He was a strange man, quirky and predictable, but somehow we meshed perfectly.  Well, as long as I gave in to his inner OCD that is.  But finding ways to irritate him was incredibly entertaining, and I would go out of my way to find ways to push his "quirk" button.

He wasn't a confrontational man, so mostly our run-ins were passive-aggressive, like the rag by the sink.  He persisted in draping it over the faucet.  However, it was always in the way when I turned the faucet on, getting wet, becoming water-logged, and inevitably falling into a bowl full of gross, should-have-been-washed-out-weeks-ago water.  So, after using his toothbrush to fish the rag out of the turbid water, I would rinse it off and lay it on the back of the sink to dry.  The next day, I would come home to find the rag once again draped over the faucet.  And rinse, and repeat.

This back and forth went on and on until the day when he hid all of the rags and refused to use them in the kitchen at all.  That's okay, because I found something else that irritated him more.

This apartment was so cheap that we had to supply our own microwave.  Luckily, my parents still had a small, counter-top version that worked perfectly in our kitchen.  When I first set it up, I didn't really think about the placement of the microwave.  I simply put it in the first spot I could find.  But as my use of it increased, due mainly in part to a large consumption of frozo-meals, I realized how inconvenient its location really was.  You see, the refrigerator was located on the opposite end of the kitchen.  So, a person would have to walk to one end to get previously-stated frozo-meal and then trudge all...the...way...to...the...other...end of the kitchen to put it in the microwave for radioactive cooking.  I found those extra two steps during every meal a waste of valuable time and energy.  So, I got the bright idea to move the microwave to the other end of the kitchen, directly across from the refrigerator.

I was standing, admiring my genius, when my roommate came in and exploded.  This blasphemy, this outrage, this gross injustice of chaos would not be tolerated.  I spent an hour trying to convince him of the efficiency and brilliance of my idea.  But all he could see was that it was different from what he was used to, and he hated change.  In the end, I put the microwave back in its original place.  By the next day, it was back at the other end of the kitchen!

On the flip side, he was obsessed with tidiness, so he vacuumed and cleaned regularly.  I wasn't what you'd call a slob, but I was definitely a lot more lax than he was.  I'd wait until we ran out of dishes before bothering to clean them (which didn't take long, since we only had two of everything).  But he liked to keep a nice place, straightening up the pillows on the couch, dusting, removing general clutter.  So, I guess there's something positive to be said for having OCD too.

Now, I lived with my college roommate for four years, and in all that time, I never once saw him without a hat.  Usually, he was wearing a black Detroit Redwings hat, but occasionally he'd rotate in an Atlanta Braves hat to jazz things up.  He wore it everywhere, even while sitting in our dorm room and apartment.  He could be sitting there in a pair of boxer shorts and a white undershirt, and he'd still have a hat on.  He would even go to the barber, remove his hat, get a haircut, and put his hat back on before he left the shop.  I used to tease him about how insulting that was to the barber, like he hated his haircut so much that he had to cover it up.  He didn't care.

You might suggest that perhaps I saw him take it off when he slept, which he did.  But he kept a hat stand directly next to the bed, and he’d place the hat on it when he went to bed and pick it up as soon as he woke up again.  I honestly didn’t even know he had hair under there until his wedding, which was 15 years after we graduated!

Equally weird is that I also never saw his feet.  He wore white, calf-high tube socks all the time, no matter the weather or occasion.  He’d wear them while he slept.  He’d wear them into the bathroom for his shower (I assume he took them off to bathe) and then took an extra pair in there with him to change into before coming back out.  I started to imagine that he had webbed feet or was missing a toe or something!  On top of the socks, he had a pair of Adidas slip-on sandals that he wore around the dorm and apartment…always with his white socks.  I've known him for sixteen years now, and I still have never seen that man's feet.  (It's not a fetish, it's just weird.)