I was just thinking over the roommates I've had (lets exclude spouses and signficant others). The wierdest roommate I had was this woman from Tennesse who was accepted into my graduate program. She and I had nothing in common culturally. My other roommate and I discovered that she was cooking her meals on a little burner set on a shoe box in her room. She wouldn't use our silverware or our washer and dryer. She eventually moved out only to join my lab where she decided that I had tried to kill her with a neurotoxin (she had a stomach bug). I think that psychotropic meds. would of been in order.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

Answers

I had five different roommates in the dorms in college, which wasn't hard to do considering that for the first two years they were making us fit three people to a room, a room which was designed for two people. But anyway. There was one weird one in the bunch, a guy named Eric. My best friend and I got him as a roommate one year. His favorite thing to do was sleep, which he did almost all the time, which seriously hindered how much we could use our room since he wanted the lights out and no noise. One time we cranked up the thermostat as we were leaving for classes in the morning. It turned the room into an oven :-) but it also turned Eric against my friend and there was almost a fight in the hallway over it. We got with our Resident Advisor and he talked the guy into moving into a different dorm that offered single occupant rooms at a higher cost. One week I slept down the hall in someone else's room because I seriously thought this guy was psycho and would do something to me in my sleep. He was so pathetic. He told us one morning after having been out at nightclubs all the last night that he'd spent money buying drinks for women and had gotten nowhere. His exact words were, "Twenty bucks and not even a kiss." :-)

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

Ah, the Maureen story! Maureen was my suitemate (4 to a suite) in college. Maureen was a troubled soul. Any story you had, she like *totally* had done the same thing. If your mom was sick- her mom was like, dying! If your dad owned a construction company- her dad, like, owned a chain! She kept her sash and tiara from some local strawberry festival in her hometown prominently displayed and took every opportunity to regale us with tales of being Strawberry Queen. She was a hypochondriac who suffered, at different times from: hypoglycemia, arthritis, mono, and my personal favorite: orange pee.

Maureen had long curly hair that she never washed- we timed her showers and they went from about 4 minutes at the beginning of the semester to 45 seconds by the end of the semester. EVERY TIME, she emerged with her hair dry. She ate microwave oatmeal every morning for breakfast- and *never* washed the bowl. It was crusted and re- crusted with dried oatmeal, and she used it every day. She also had this filthy sweater she wore every day and never washed. We would hear her on the phone telling her friends she was dating the basketball and football players at the school. She kept insisting we call her "Mo" and wrote "Mo" on all her things. Like giving her a knickname meant we were friends. I could go on and on...

Anyway, it all came to a head when, at the end of first semester, she lost her checkbook, and rather than tell her Mom, she accused our other 2 suitemates and a girl across the hall (not me, oddly enough. Guess she thought we were friends) of stealing it. The cops came for them and fingerprinted them and everything. Well, that pretty much did it, and she ended up going home for the rest of the semester. Freak. We'll never stop laughing at Maureen stories.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

My most interesting roommate was Will. Will was studying for the bar exam and working as a lifeguard. He was extremely vain, but a lot of fun -- IF you weren't dating him.

One time I came home to find a girl in our living room. Will wasn't home, and she explained she was waiting for him. Turns out he had told her she wasn't pretty enough to be seen in public with him, but they could still sleep together. So, she regularly drove 70+ miles to sleep with him. I think I was too appalled at her complete lack of self-esteem to say anything.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

Well, I was blessed with some pretty decent roommates all through my single days. However, there were some incredibly strange people living in my dorm in college. The most memorable was this woman who managed to get a 2 person efficiency dorm to herself and promptly had her boyfriend and his Irish setter move in. Of course that was, shall we say, frowned upon by the administration. The dog barked constantly and they would tie it to a tree in the woods outside our building regardless of the weather. Not good for the poor animal. The main thing she will always be remembered for was that she had to be the spaciest person I have ever met. I'm sure that the setter had a higher IQ. You could not talk to the woman about anything. However, the guys in the complex always seemed to enjoy when she played with the dog outside. For some reason she'd always do it wearing just her underwear. I have to tell you, that behavior was just a little odd for people living on the Alabama gulf coast. Seems like most of us were old fashioned enough that we actually wore clothes when we went outside. What can I say? I guess we were just prudes. Oh, and sorry to hear about your psycho roomie Vicki. I swear that not all people living in Tennessee are like that! Really! But then again, this IS the state where it is legal to take your roadkill home. I be that makes you feel warm and fuzzy.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

Wow you all have some good stories. I lived in a house in my 2nd year of university with other students. At one point 10 people were living in the house including a guy who built a bed in the rafters of the garage. It was out of control. By the time I moved out I hated everyone including my good friend. It took us over a year to become friends again.

Mr. GForce and I shared a room on the top floor and we would often hide out in it because what was going on downstairs was too crazy. We had a tv in the living room that you could program the names of channels into. Sometimes we would program words on each channel so that as you clicked through it would spell out a sentence or something. Someone as a joke wrote something about one room mate's annoying girlfriend and he accused the wrong guy, actually wielding a large knife at the guy. That's only one story.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

I was 28 years old before I went to college and always had my own place, etc., so I don't have any college roomie stories. When I was in the military my buddies and I always rented a house which was always called a "snake ranch" no matter where in the world it was located. I t was called a snake ranch because, well that's where you took the "snakes" you met in the downtown bars. I had one buddy who refused to ever wash the dishes he used and just put them in the sink. One day I got a cardboard box, put all the dishes in it and carried them to the dumpster. When he finally noticed, he said: "HEY! My mother gave me them dishes!" To which I replied, "Well, you mother should have come along to wash 'em." We had a staring contest and then decided to go buy paper plates. Living with two other bachelors whose minds are on "wimmen" and little else has it's moments. I once suggested they have one of their girlfriends sorta clean-up occassionally. Snigger, snigger. "That ain't what we bring 'em here for..." I was 28 years old before I went to college and I had my own place...Been there, done that.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

Our college dorm had itsy, bitsy little rooms, so we all had our own and I never had an actual roommate, but some of my dorm mates were pretty interesting. There was one girl who, whenever someone else's boyfriend showed up, would somehow lose her clothes - she'd suddenly have to take a shower and - oops! - drop the towel, or she'd come wandering out of her room in a teddy. I wonder what the hell was behind that. We had another girl who, if she got upset, would go into her room and start breaking things (dishes, by the sound of it, I was right next door). No serious psychos though.

-- Anonymous, December 01, 2000

I think *I* was the psycho roommate during my first year of college. I ended up with an ex-anorexic ex-cheerleader who thought I was spawn of the devil. The Japanese music, silver plastic tiara, bellbottoms, and computer guts strewn about were apparently too much for her, and it prly didn't help that I was gut-wrenchingly homesick and cried all the time. By the end of the year, however, she had decided that I was "the sweetest person in the world," because I cleaned up after her rather than live in filth myself and listened to her complain about being pregnant without comment. She was a nice girl, but completely lacking in common sense and not very bright (she got pregnant because she ran out of pills and didn't think they "did it often enough that it would matter"). I'm sure it was a growing experience for both of us.

-- Anonymous, December 01, 2000

"...And didn't think they did it often enough that it would matter."

Good lord, now I've heard everything.

-- Anonymous, December 02, 2000

"...And didn't think they did it often enough that it would matter."

Awwww, come on baby, just this once won't cause anything to happen........ :o)

uhhmmmm Yeah Right.

wink wink, nod nod, say no more

-- Anonymous, December 02, 2000

Well, to be perfectly honest, I never do it often enough, either. But when I do...it matters.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2000

Oh, I had a doozy of a roommate my 3rd year in college. We shared a room, and she'd bring home random guys, usually early in the evening when I was still out. So I'd come in at midnight, and not realize there was a guy in the upper bunk (ain't bunk beds fun!) until he got up in the morning, or the woke me up by having sex. Oh yeah, she was lovely. Not to mention the screaming 3 a.m. phonecalls to her boyfriend at home, whom she accused of cheating. She's always turn up this one song, I think by Paul Simon. I still can't listen to that song without cringing. I was SO tempted to tell her bf that she brought random guys in, but I never actually met the guy, and I figured using redial to reach him at 4 a.m. after the diatribe would have been a bit too much.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

I went to a small college in upstate PA and had a scary redneck roommate - she played the song "Devil went down to Georgia" about 20 times a day. She also slept with any guy who looked twice at her and dressed really skanky. And used about 30 gallons of Rave hairspray a day.

-- Anonymous, February 09, 2001

I'm a regular visitor of Gwen's website, but I have never posted til now. But seeing's how I'm in the throes of university life (and hence, I'm living in a dorm with a roommate as I write this), I couldn't help but post.

Freshman year I was living with a perky sorority chick named, Kerry Kennedy (too perfect). We didn't mesh at all but she taught me all about what it means to be respectful and courteous. She ended up moving out before the end of first semester and I had the room all to myself.

Sophomore year I had a roommate named Arwen Otwell who hailed from Germany. Not the most friendly person, let me tell ya. She did all sorts of subtle things to let me know that she didn't like me, like sticking her electronic potpourri machine on my side of the room (even shoving stuff off of my desk to stick it there). She would say I could use her tv, but then she would move her tv over to her bed so that the only way a person could view the screen was if that person was ON her bed. I moved out at the end of the semester, and when I told her she said "Wow...I should invite all of my friends over and celebrate." Whatta bitch!

Second roommate, second semester was a dream come true. We still write eachother even though we don't live together. I'm still working my way through dorm living and she moved into a house with her cousin.

This year, my junior year, my roommate was--get this--a thirty year old freshman! Yeah, it was interesting but we really got along great. I let her use my tv, vcr, phone and computer...she'd buy me alchohol.

Now I'm studying abroad in California so I had yet another roommate. She seems nice at times because she shares everything she has and I do the same...no problems there...but she has a little problem with common courtesy. This weekend she let her boyfriend spend the entire weekend in our room and she never even told me! I don't wanna be a prude or seem rude by telling her and him that I don't feel comfortable with him there, but at the same time I really don't like his presence. This is the first time I've ever encountered such a thing, so I'm at a total loss. I don't wanna cause a scene because she had problems with her last roommate and they had to call in the RA's to break up the fight!

At any rate, I always try to get along with my roommates but the problem is that they don't always want to get along with me. Next year, however, I'm definitely gonna look for an apartment.

-- Anonymous, February 13, 2001