Dorm Roommate Horror Stories from Baby Boomers

Parents Forum
61

<p>My first roommate was a 21 year old freshman. Her boyfriend visited the first weekend. He at least was decent enough to pay for a motel room for them. It went downhill from there. First week she hit the bars a couple of times. Soon after it became a nightly thing for her to stroll in drunk after the bars closed. Boyfriend's friend on campus became roommate's new boyfriend in a short time. At some point in the first month she had the nerve to ask me to move next door with a bitter, unsocialable snob she knew I disliked. For better or worse we worked it out. </p>

<p>The worst was when I returned from an early morning test, wanting to do nothing more than sleep for a few hours. Roommate and new boyfriend are sleeping in her bed just a few feet from mine. At some point they wake up and boyfriend tries to convince her that I'm asleep so it's okay to engage in "adult activities" while I'm there. I never pretended to cough so much in my life. </p>

<p>She and new boyfriend decide to become the marijuana dealers of choice for the quad. This is after she told me that parents had forced her to see a psychiatrist for her drug "problem." Parents had apparently forced her to come to school also, but she rarely went to class. </p>

<p>Surprisingly (sarcasm intended) she flunked out first semester. I had the double to myself second semester. </p>

<p>Like others, I envied those with "buddy" roommates. It did force me though to seek people out, and she did teach me how to french braid hair.</p>

62

<p>LOL although I technically don't belong here I'll throw in my roommate story-</p>

<p>I don't mind messy dorm roommates (long as their crap doesn't come to my side and smell the whole room) but I'm living in a studio apartment with a new roommate. She's not so bad anymore but in the beginning it was ridiculous. </p>

<p>She would get drunk with her friends in the apartment during weekdays when I was trying to write my papers (I couldn't flood them out with my earphones! URGH!) and then she came back one night DRUNK and first threw in the kitchen sink which I found disgusting. And then she went to sleep and threw up all over her bed. Urgh I had to make sure she didn't choke from her own puke. She didn't remember it the next day either, although she put the pieces together and apologized to me endlessly. She would be loud when I tried to sleep sometimes and then complain to me my typing was too loud for her. I'm just VERY happy about not being sexiled so far, I do sincerely thank her for that!</p>

<p>FORTUNATELY we worked everything out and we get along although aren't the best of friends. She's pretty chill now. :) Good thing though, I learned I grew balls to tell people when I'm not pleased.</p>

<p>Rooming your friend is not always the best solution either. I lived for 2 years with my best friend of 6 years at the time and we realized our schedules HORRIBLY mismatched. I was living in her house, but paid her mother. She went to sleep at 10 while I went to sleep at around 2-4. She also wanted complete quiet and silence (she didn't even want the computer on because it made a fan noise!) and darkness (no monitor). I was trying to write my paper one night which was due the next morning and she was yelling at me "why didn't you do it earlier!" blah blah. I once printed something out in middle of the night (i usually don't do this) because of some other paper and she stole my printer and hid it in a closet which I found very irritating. Never live in your friends house, they'll yell you stuff like "I'm the only reason you get to live here blah blah!" like I didn't pay them. I horribly horribly wanted to move out but I didn't have enough money and was too young (high school) at the time.</p>

<p>Good thing though, we are still close friend (somehow). We came to terms after several months and sorta rotated the room (i took it over during the spring and she took over during winter, hahaha)</p>

<p>Next year i really want a single though. I guess I'll see, I have a friend I think I'll get along with if i had to room together.</p>

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<p>I too had a roommate from Iran back in the 70's. She was crowned Ms. Tehran and the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. She never bathed and spent about 20 hours a day looking at herself in the mirror. I remember her crying for a week when she got a zit. She transfered to an all girls dorm after one term because she didn't like the parade of Iranian boys who constantly dropped by our room before (gasp!) she had her make-up on.</p>

<p>I was in my hippie-days and thought she came from Mars. Political discussions were tough. She thought the Shah was cute, US had better clothes, but France had better shoes.</p>

64

<p>Oh mythmom, I love the Velvet Underground too--especially Heroin. We were just playing it on our pre-thanksgiving car trip.</p>

<p>My first roommate was nice enough, but she had 3 cats (and a litterbox of course). I liked her and I like cats, but not in a tiny dorm room. Reading some of these stories, I guess I didn't have it so bad.</p>

<p>My second roommate married one of my brothers. They amicably divorced after a few years and they both married other people.</p>

<p>My son feels very fortunate with his roomie. They both have the same night owl habits.</p>

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<p>Three weeks into the start of term my Freshman year, my roommate found out she was pregnant and moved back home.</p>

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<p>My room mate was a senior & I was a transfer sophomore. We got along pretty well but she thought the Godfather & Mafia were fascinating fiction! She also dated a scary guy (not a student at our U) who was older and wore a black cape & lived in a van/truck/car. He claimed that the government/CIA/FBI was after him. We urged her to quit seeing him & she gradually agreed. We had her hide every time he dropped by the dorm & we’d tell him that she was out and after a while, he’d give up & go away. After several WEEKS or more of this, he finally gave up & stopped coming by (thank goodness).</p>

<p>When we rented a house (I was a senior), I had two housemates. One always had her married BF over & they were all over each other in the living room (I guess it was less confining than her bedroom). I found it upsetting (as I had met the wife & felt sorry that he had shipped her back home & was fooling around all the time in our place with my housemate). The other girl was a clean freak & kept trying to get us all to agree that we had to clean, sweep & mop the kitchen several times/day (she left after 1st semester). I spent most of my time at my BF’s two bedroom apartment. :slight_smile: He too was sad about the married guy who was a grad student in his department & fooling around with my housemate. We lost touch with all of them & recently I’ve lost touch with the old HS BF (we used to send annual Christmas cards–I guess I’ll send him & his wife a holiday card–we used to exchange them).</p>

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<p>Jeez, reading these stories I realise how lucky I was! Assigned together freshman year and were roommates all four years! Boarding school roomie, though was such a B—H that I literally put a tape down the middle of the room! Now at Reunions she’s so guilt ridden about her past behavior she’s all over me like a tent. I can’t shake her!</p>

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<p>I, too, was a freshman assigned a senior roommate. Someone said before I left for school that the roommate must be a dud to be rooming with a freshman. That had not occurred to me, but she was very odd.</p>

<p>Her last name was Packard and she had pictures of Packard cars on the wall. Her father was a doctor and I heard that EVERY DAY. But what I thought was the oddest thing she did was she would buy shoes and wear them for a week or two and then return them to the store. I have no idea what happened to her…</p>

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<p>“when ever in your life will you do this again with someone you’ve never met before? Its just not a life skill that you really need.”</p>

<p>Sorry, but I disagree. I’ve found that I’ve always had to use the skills in my life of getting along with people I don’t like or people I disagree with. I think EVERYONE should room with people they don’t get along with; you really learn a lot about yourself and others! If nothing else, it makes you really appreciate your good friends!</p>

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<p>My freshman roommate was black (I’m white) and she was one of the nicest people I met freshman year – we got along much better than other people in my house who had different sleep schedules and expectations for neatness, etc. But first week of school, we were walking through campus together and she saw some of her friends, who were black. She introduced me, and one of them pointed at me and said, “This…is your roommate?” Her friends all laughed, and she walked off with them.</p>

<p>I kind of chalked it up to my first taste of discrimination. When she came back to our room later, she was as nice as always, and we got along fine, but I always remember that.</p>

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<p>LOL–I was a senior with a freshman (transfer) roommate. I was returning from a year in Europe and my older sis had roomed in a prime suite with 3 sophomores. They wanted to fill their suite for the next year, so I replaced my sis. Unfortunately, the girl who was to be my roommate had financial problems and didn’t come back. So the empty spot was filled by “Shelly.” Once she OD’d on diet pills and went to the ER. She had a huge crush on Rick Springfield and had a poster of him on the wall. She had no academic or career ambitions–she said she always wanted to be a cashier or teller because she liked to “touch money” (?!) She dated a high school dropout from her nearby hometown–simply because he looked like Rick Springfield. They would come home drunk and have sex in the TOP bunk while I was “sleeping” in the bottom. . .(everyone in the hall would start opening their doors because they thought they heard someone knocking.) I seriously considered moving 2nd semester, but didn’t want to give up the good location. By then another suitemate got pregnant, married and moved out. Then I started to hang out with her roommate. She had bulimia, abused laxatives, wore a girdle though she was size 8, spent an hour fixing her hair to go to the dining hall, put on makeup to go jogging at night. . .</p>

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<p>My freshman roommate thought that she was Ann Margret. She had been cast in her high school’s production of ByeBye Birdie, and liked her costume dress (1961 era fitted bodice and full skirt with petticoat underneath) so much that she had 7 copies of it made, in different pastel colors. She had 7 pairs of identical pastel flat pumps to wear with the dresses, and 7 identical ribbons to wear in her 1961 style high ponytail. That’s all she ever wore, day after day. This was in the 1970’s when everybody else was wearing jeans, tie dyed shirts and love beads.</p>

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<p>UCLA Band Mom: You win.</p>

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<p>That sounds like a psychiatrist’s career case right there.</p>

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<p>We didn’t have roommates in an all girls dorm of singles. </p>

<p>My next door neighbour though was rather “unique” …she had two personas. One was the vamp wearing a long blond wig, tons of makeup, and very revealing clingy trampy dresses, which she wore every day to class when the rest of us wore the usual hippy stuff, and the other was the good demure girl who would go home on Saturdays to her very Orthodox Jewish family.</p>

<p>She was both brilliant and wild, and for some reason took a liking to me. She would drag me to go shopping until I got too scared at the piles of shoplifted clothes she carried out (hangers and all) under her huge black coat. She was so good I didn’t even notice till we’d get out of the stores and I’d nearly have a heart attack.</p>

<p>In our dorm we were only allowed male guests on Sunday afternoons, with the doors open, but she managed to hide a besotten assistant prof in her room for 5 days, till he was discovered and fired and she was suspended for a couple of months.</p>

<p>She also begged me to go home for dinner with her once… gave me a crash course on kosher traditions, and without telling me in advance, introduced me to her mother with a new name and told her I was Jewish and made up this whole history of my background that I had to keep straight. </p>

<p>She was also bulimic, and attempted to covert me to the pleasure of gorging on boxes of Oreos and staying thin. No thanks.</p>

<p>I sometimes wonder what became of her.</p>

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<p>My freshman roommate told me upfront she was only there for her M.R.S. degree. She set up a full bar in our dorm room (age 18 drinking age) and every single day rose at 5:30 am and always dropped every coin she had onto the tiled floor. I have no idea why she got up so early or why she always had to make so much noise. I moved out as soon as the semester ended.</p>

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<p>While these new stories are great, did anyone notice that the thread is from 2007?
These kids are unlikely to gain great experience from our roomie drama, seeing as they are out of college now…</p>

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<p>I think at this point people are posting solely for their personal satisfaction.</p>

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<p>Hi, UCLA Band Mom,</p>

<p>I’m curious about “The Ann-Margret Roomie”! Now, I’m wondering weather you went to college during the early 1970s, or during the late 1970s; you don’t have to tell me the years, if you don’t wish to do so, but I’m curious, because, well…an early 1970s roommate might have been influenced by “Bye Bye, Birdie” alone, while a mid-late 1970s roommate might have been influenced by “Happy Days” and/ or the “Grease” movie!</p>

<p>This roommate of yours sounds as though she was simply fond of her costume, and of the theatre, but it seems to me that if there was more to her peculiarity than just her outfit obsession, she’d be odd enough to be like a character from a novel, or something.</p>

<p>I mean, was she just sort of into the 1950s LOOK, or was she obsessed with the entire ERA? Did she BEHAVE as though she was livin’ in the 1950s? Did she fantasize about Elvis, The Fonz/ Henry Winkler, Danny/ John Travolta, etc.? Did she use 1950s lingo until your ears were ringing from the repetitiveness of words like “swell”? Did she choose her boyfriends based upon how much they resembled Greasers? Would she sing the songs from “Bye Bye, Birdie” on a daily basis, and call herself “Kim”?</p>

<p>I’m also curious to know if she resembled Ann-Margret, because some people who resemble movie stars (even SLIGHTLY) try too desperately to be like them.</p>

<p>Finally, what sort of a family did she come from?</p>

<p>I know that I more than likely sound TOO curious, but I love writing, and this unnamed “Ann-Margret Lady” sounds as though she’d make quite a character in a novel!</p>

<p>Bye Now,
ThriftShopGirl</p>

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<p>Please use old threads for information only.</p>

<p>If you click on the member’s name that you’re addressing, you’ll see that they haven’t posted for quite awhile.</p>

<p>Closing old thread.</p>