You'll never make it out of this apartment alive

I like living on my own a lot.  In fact, it's arguably the best thing that's ever happened to me.  I've learned way more about basic life skills since I've moved out of my parents place than I did when I was inside of it.  I can cook, clean, and deal with minor emergencies on my own as opposed to having to rely on someone else.  I'm also in the process of learning how to take care of some basic auto maintenance on my own, but that's neither here nor there.  What I want to discuss today is living with roommates.  Unfortunately, as long as I've been living with roommates, I've had some less than stellar ones.  

When I was living in a dorm, my roommate was spoiled, closet gay kid who was whacked out on downers all the time.  Rooming with him was actually not that bad.  We never really fought, and the only time there was any sort of tension was when I would have like three friends in town for the weekend, and we would come home retardedly drunk and noisy at like 2 or 3 am.  It was actually pretty funny for the most part watching him whine to his friends about really trivial rich kid shit.  I also viewed it as a bit of a game of clue.  He was from my hometown, and several of my friends had known him prior to me rooming with him.  The overwhelming majority were all convinced that he was gay, but no one was quite sure.  After a year of rooming with him, I was still kind of unsure myself.  In fact, to this day, I have no idea if he's gay.  Sure, he watched shows like the OC and America's Next Top Model, but he also I guess tried to cover this up by talking about girls with me, and he did actually own a Girls Next Door calender.  If I had to guess, my roommate probably was gay, but I will be damned if I had any sort of conclusive evidence I guess.  I mean, I really don't care all that much,  but I just find it very funny when I meet people who know him, that's the first question I get.  Even his ex girlfriend, with whom I shared a class, asked that question.

Moving on down the list of roommates to the current situation, I ended up going with randomly assigned roommates this year in an off campus apartment.  I was originally kind of skeptical as to the kids I was rooming with (facebook is a wonderful tool for forming prejudices), but for the first few months, things were actually pretty fun.  There was a solid amount of substance abuse and a steady flow of attractive girls.  But after a while, the constant dissarray of the living room , the 2:30 AM fucking hurricanes, the constant usage of all of my shit, and just everything else got to be way too much.  Unfortunately for me, my three roommates all know each other, so I am in the overwhelming minority.  To them, it's okay to leave piles of dirty dishes in the living room, and it's alright to use whatever happens to be in the fridge, even if they didn't pay for it.  My roommates, for the most part, are completely spoiled.  None of them understand how difficult it is to get a job and just assume that if they needed one, they could find one in a minute.  

It's hard to watch people be so clueless and spoiled.  Don't get me wrong, my roommate Mike is actually really cool, and I do like him.  The other two are practically invalids though.  There is nothing exciting, exceptional, or cool about being a dickhead frat boy wearing Ed Hardy shirts.  Similarly, there is nothing exciting, exceptional, or cool about someone who spends their days doing nothing but ordering wingzone and just watching youtube videos all day.  

So mostly, be careful with roommates.  Don't leave the people you are going to be living with up to chance.  If you have to leave some up for chance, you're better off making sure you have at least half of the people of your residence on your side, then at least confrontation becomes an option.  And if you can room with people who, while not your absolute best friends, room with people that you can get along well with and have a good time with.  Hopefully, I'll be able to take all of my own advice finally in August.  

xoxox

Joe