Real life sure is... interesting. · 5:37am Nov 5th, 2012
Whenever something noteworthy happens in my life it always reminds me of the supposedly ancient Chinese curse which says, "May you live in interesting times."
Well, I had an interesting weekend. Before I really get into this weekend, let me share some background info about myself: I'm a junior in college at Southern Virginia University pursuing a bachelor's degree in English after spending a year in Scotland at Edinburgh University doing the second year of a 5-year master's degree in Mathematics program before discovering that my love of math and logic only goes so far. After that, I returned home to Meridian, Idaho where I was a commuter student at Boise State University where I looked at getting a computer science degree. Battling a combination of depression, injury, illness, and family troubles, I withdrew from my second semester there while I worked for a company doing tech support. I realized that I didn't really like the whole computer programming thing very much, so I reexamined my priorities. To make the long story shorter, I ended up changing majors again, and coming here to Buena Vista, VA to study English. Well, I've been relatively happy with my decision. I feel like I'm learning interesting things, and I feel like I'm working towards doing something that I want to do.
Now, this weekend began like any other. I had stayed up a little too late on Thursday night, so I barely made it out the door in time for my Friday morning class, came back to my room, and napped until lunch. I came back from eating and went to sit at my computer to work on some homework, and--after about 45 minutes of that--played some Knights of the Old Republic II. Time passed until dinner, and I set my computer to sleep, grabbed my ipod and audiobook, and walked over to the dining hall. It wasn't anything spectacular, and I thought the cooks must've overcooked that batch, so I grabbed a bowl of cereal and some salad, then went back to my room. Around 7, my roommate--let's call him SC--gets back from his tennis tournament. Now, I won't go into all the ways I've grown to hate my roommate, but basically what him coming back meant was that I couldn't make any noise. So, I stopped talking to friends over teamspeak and settled in to just text chat with them while I went back to playing single-player RPGs. Things went calmly for a couple hours, SC sat at his desk doing homework or something, and eventually it got around to 1:30am. At this point, I was a bit tired of playing KotOR, so I had turned on some episodes of Warehouse 13. SC walks over to the lightswitch, hits it, and tells me that I have to go to sleep because he is. Naturally, I said he can have the light off and stuff, but I'm going to finish my show. I've got headphones on so it's not like there's a noise problem. Still, somehow he has it in his head that he can hear--and is bothered by--the noise coming out of my headset. Now, he's been demanding this "complete silence" in the room thing for a couple weeks now, and it's not even finals or midterms, so I'm a bit fed up with it and I tell him that it's my room as much as his; I can stay up if I want to.
Then the interesting stuff starts to happen. He turns the light back on and walks up to me, raising his voice--not quite to shouting--and demanding that I have to do what he says. He asks me how old I am. I say I'm 20, and that it doesn't matter. He says that because he's 23, I should "respect my elders" and do what he wants. I call it crap, and stand up--I was still seated in my desk chair before. So what he does is say that he's going to take my computer and throw it in the trash. I tell him to go ahead, and I'll get him thrown out of school. So then he turns around and goes into his closet to grab his tennis racket. (He's captain of the tennis team.) He points it at me and threatens to smack me with it. Calling his bluff, I tell him to go ahead and hit me; see what happens. So he pokes me with the end of it, and I tell him--as menacingly as a 115 pound, 5'4" guy can--not to touch me again. He continues to threaten me, escalating by saying that I'm dead. He repeats that, then specifically says that he's going to kill me.
Since I'm pretty tired of his bull, I tell him I'm not the one with a problem, and that he should go talk to our RA if he thinks he's in the right. He storms out the door, ordering me to stay there--as if I'd run away?--and goes to see our RA. A couple minutes later, the RA comes in, with SC right behind him. SC tells him that he should tell me that I have to go to bed. Seriously. The RA explains that I'm not doing anything against campus policy. SC calls that "bullshit" repeatedly, and I start to tell my side of the story to the RA. I explain how SC started threatening me with the tennis racket--which he's still holding--and suddenly he claims that he grabbed it in self defense because I stood up to talk to him. He has the gall to claim that I was threatening him and he grabbed the racket because he was afraid of me.
To make the long story of that night shorter, I started making arrangements with the RA--when we got a chance to talk alone--about moving out, but insisted that if anyone would have to pay a room change fee, it should be the guy threatening to kill me. Somehow SC calmed down, and we both ended up going to sleep. The next day, I spent most of my time away from the room, only returning to pack up my stuff, and completely ignoring him when he was in there too. Around dinner time, I'm all packed and ready to go, and SC comes to me demanding I give him $6 that I owe him. Now, technically I do owe him that because of some pizza he bought from me when I didn't have change for him, but after all the crap he's pulled I'm not going to give him anything, so that's what I tell him. He goes on for a few minutes ranting about how they are totally different things and that I have to give him the money. I refuse again, and he starts threatening me again, saying that I don't "know" him and that he's going to kill me. I tell him that I don't want to know him, I don't want to see him, and I don't want to even think about him ever again. I'm done with him. He doesn't seem to get it, so I just walk out and go eat dinner. When I come back, I notice that he's gone for a shower, so I enlist the RA and a helpful dorm-mate to help me move all my stuff then.
So now I'm set up in a new room that I've got all to myself; it's a lot nicer not living with a psychopath. I figure that's the end of that adventure and settle in to unpack all my stuff and relax.
Sunday rolls around and I get a call from my bank. It turns out I am now the victim of identity theft. Someone in Georgia used my card to pay for something for $9 at an inn, and tried to buy plane tickets, which the card was declined for. Naturally, I cancel my card, and the bank tells me that I should be credited back the $9, but now I'm out of a card for a week or so while they mail the replacement to my house back in Idaho, and then my family mails it from there to me in Virginia. So I call my family to let them know, and to relate the tale above about SC, and then to ask about anything interesting going on with them too. As it turns out, my brother's wife who he's trying to divorce--because she's crazy, violent, and on parole for said domestic violence where she tried to kill my brother with a kitchen knife, and started cheating on him--and her boyfriend brought his, the boyfriend's, daughter to trick or treat in my brother's neighborhood. In fact, she's even crazier than my roommate, and what she does is try to harass my brother and his daughter.
Luckily, she's got a parole hearing in a few days and she should be headed to jail pretty soon. That should also make custody of my niece a non-issue--my brother's wife is six months behind on child support payments too.
I suppose all told, it made for an interesting weekend, though I'm sure the tale here is pretty dull and poorly told. I just wanted, maybe even needed, to put my thoughts about the whole thing down. At least I can use this as an excuse for not editing and proofreading people's stories right? Anyways, that's about it. How were all y'all's weekends?
Crazy roommates are not fun. Very happy to hear that you got out of that situation.
Sounds like a lot of stuff went down, but it's all calming down for you. It happens to everyone, those weekends where everything goes insane. Glad to hear that it's (seemingly) behind you now.
And that Chinese curse... well, living in Interesting times sure makes for interesting stories. Although sometimes, the level of Interesting-ness can be a bit excessive.
Sounds like you had an... exciting?... weekend. Sorry about crazy asshole roommates, man. Glad that you're okay, though!
I visited a college on Friday and did nothing for the last two days. You win.
I did nothing
Wait, this isn't notalwaysright.com.
Anyway, that's quite an interesting turn of events. I must say you handled the situation quite well, and I was smiling when the RA started to take your side; I hate bigoted people. Stay strong, be honest, and may everything (within reason) work in your favor.
You're really good at writing long sentences. Put the manic energy you put into relating this blog into a story, and it'd be a gold mine.
Just saying. What else is poni poni for if not a soft, downy bed for our rusted fuckheaps of emotional byproducts?
Take your time living the life, abrasive or not. Editing takes second to that.