I didn’t realize I was living with a wacko until it was too late.
While taking a few summer courses at the University of Chicago after my junior year of high school, I lived with one of the most ridiculous people I have ever met. For the purposes of this article, let’s call her Alice.
When I first moved in, she seemed a bit too religious for my taste, but it didn’t bug me all that much. I figured everyone had a right to his or her own opinions.
Unfortunately, my roommate had a lot more strange habits and quirks I ought to have been worried about. I can confidently say that she was the craziest roommate I have ever had (and there have been many).
She beat out the goth, emo girl I lived with in New York one summer, who had the strange habit of collecting knives and forks and keeping them in our room, displayed on her desk. As soon as my 12-year-old self and my mother walked into the room and saw her black bed sheets, we knew something was a bit off.
She beat out my roommate from senior year that couldn’t sleep with any lights on, which meant I had to tape over all possible disturbances, including the temperature displayed on my mini-fridge, the digits on my alarm clock, and the light from my laptop charger.
She even beat out my suitemate from senior year who always mysteriously moved my toothbrush from the counter to the shower floor. I don’t know why she did this, but needless to say, I started to hide it between uses.
Alice was a bit odd from the start, and I suppose that’s why I should have been more suspicious. At least the others were upfront about their annoying habits and strange quirks.
I was let in on one of Alice’s annoying habits the morning after our first night at the University. I woke up to heavy panting and a strange lulling tune coming from the ground next to my bed.
I turned to find Alice stretched out in a strange pose which I can only assume was some type of intense yoga, drenched in sweat. It is important to note that it was 6 a.m. at this point.
She informed me that she had been up for hours, having already gone for a lengthy run. I was treated to a similar wake-up call every morning for the rest of the six weeks I stayed in Chicago.
While this was annoying, it was not nearly as strange as the next thing I found out. Alice happened to leave her white journal on my bed one day, and when I handed it back to her, I asked her if she wrote every day.
“Only occasionally,” was her response, “he would get bored if I wrote every day.”
I was thrown by the use of the word “he”. When I inquired as to what she meant, I was beyond shocked. Alice informed me that the journal was for her future husband. She wrote everything about herself in it, included boys she currently liked and why he (her future husband, that is) would be so much better for her than they ever could be.
She then went on to explain that she was planning on saving her first kiss for her wedding day. I chose to keep my opinions on how awkward that would be for anyone present to myself. I’m half expecting to turn on the TV one day and see her on the new reality TV show Virgin Diaries.
About a week in I was let into another fun fact about Alice. It seems her insanity was genetic, as her parents were also crazy. One night we were watching a movie when our RA rushed in, demanding that Alice call her father.
Apparently he had called her cell phone twenty times before calling the RA a mere ten times. He had seen a status on Facebook that Alice had posted in which she had stated “Ew, what a creep.”
Alice had been referring to her “ex-boyfriend” (I’m not even going to get started on the fact that I don’t consider someone she’s never kissed or gone on a date with to be an ex-boyfriend). Apparently this “ex-boyfriend” was dating someone just like Alice, and she had felt the need to express her dislike of this turn of events.
I didn’t want to burst Alice’s bubble, but the girl her ex was dating was nothing like her. The only similarities she shared with Alice were that she played soccer and her hair was blonde, which was the color Alice had always wanted her hair to be.
Her father had seen the status and immediately assumed that Alice was in grave danger, kidnapped most likely, before he had started mercilessly calling.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but if I ever kidnapped someone, my first action would be to let him or her make a Facebook status about how creepy I was too.
By the end of the six weeks, I was more than ready to say goodbye to Alice forever. Of course, I’m still friends with her on Facebook, just in case she does something particularly crazy one day, because I definitely want to know about it.
