Vindication

I was just thinking of college. Back then I had such an eclectic life. Living in the dorm, by nature, lends itself to zany situations and personalities. I loved college. If I could ever re-live any time of my life for the fun of it, it would be college. Living in the dorm, going to classes, getting every meal made for you - ah, pure heaven. While my current life is so boring that I could never write a memoir, my college days could at least be an interesting chapter in a book. So in an effort to give a different flavor to my blog, I'll change subjects for a while. I think I blogged about some of these things a few years ago, but there was that change of venue and all.

I call this blog entry Vindication because it is vindication even though I didn't do anything. I try not to be a mean person & although I have my mean thoughts and moments, they are mostly fleeting. I love the vindication that happens through mere karma. Then you just have to sit back and laugh.

My first roommate in college was Kristina. She and I shared a bedroom in a dorm. There was another bedroom with two other girls, and in the middle was a kitchenette and living room and bathroom. So it was essentially a two bedroom apartment. Kristina and I were not a match made in heaven.

She was madly in love with her boyfriend Eric, who lived in Port Angeles (a two-hour drive + a ferry ride away). She had her Eric shrine all made up by the time I moved in - which was a few hours after she got there. A sign that said "Eric St.," photos of her and Eric, photos of just Eric. Every time I woke up in the morning, there was no escaping me seeing 50 different pictures of Eric staring at me. For the record, Eric was a nice guy. I'm not sure what he saw in Kristina, but oh well. Kristina was deeply attached to Eric; she talked to him for at least an hour each night. Lots of "I love you more. No, I love you more!" as I try to study. And after she talked to Eric, she had to talk to her mom for another hour. She was a business major, and she kept telling me how difficult the program was. Basically she would come home from class after lunch and study until dinner, eat dinner with the two other girls, come back to the room & commence her "I love you" call to Eric followed by repeating essentially the same thing to her mom, study for another hour or so, and then go to sleep. Business majors didn't have class on Fridays, so on rotating weekends she'd go back to Port Angeles. On the other weekends, Eric would come up for the weekend. He was to be staying in the room with us. Kristina's first class was at 8am. She'd take her shower at 6:30am and blow dry her hair in our room. Not sure why she couldn't blow dry her hair in the bathroom.

My philosophy was that college was the time in our life that we could meet new people and spread our wings a bit. And since I'm quite a nightowl, I would socialize with a lot of people in the dorm. I found living with Kristina a tad oppressive. She was always THERE, usually talking on the phone, but if she wasn't talking on the phone, she was studying & she didn't like noise. And she went to bed by 10pm.

Yes, I'd come in about 2am most nights. I tried to be quiet. I'm not a loud person, and if I'm actually trying to be quiet, I actually am very quiet. But doors squeak, and I had the top bunk.
Short into our life together, the post-it notes started. She would leave me post-its about my inferior behavior, which usually revolved about waking her up at night. "Please be quiet when you come in." I resisted the urge to reply back on the same post-it note, "I am. The stupid door squeaks, and you wanted the lower bunk." Then she started leaving me ultimatums on her post-it notes, "If you aren't here by 10pm, don't come in this room." Which resulted in me thinking and/or muttering a not so choice word.

It was around this time that Kristina and the two other girls decided to decorate the living room. Their decorating choice was to attach empty food containers to the ceiling and walls. So there would be used Ben & Jerry's and Triscuit containers attached to the walls and the ceiling. They hung used tea bags from the doorframes. It was....odd. And I'm kinda odd myself, but even I thought it was a bit much. Every day they would put their food containers on the wall. We had a trash can and a recycling bin, but for whatever reason they wanted to see those containers ferment on the walls. It wasn't just a few containers - it had to be 30 containers and at least 20 tea bags. Ewwwww.

Then Kristina left me another post-it note, "Please refrain from letting your friends sit in my chair." Let me explain this one. One of my guy friends came over to talk about his girlfriend problem (I was also the dorm therapist). The living room was occupied by the two other girls. A dorm room has bunk beds, and each person has a desk and chair. The lower bunk was Kristina's, and I thought him crawling up to my top bunk was a little weird. So I took my desk chair, and the only other chair in the room was her desk chair. It's not like he rifled through her desk. He used her dorm-issued desk chair for 30 minutes. Personally I thought Kristina was a little psycho and very controlling. She made me look like a Type B, laid-back person.

As a side note, I'm still fearful of post-it notes. Anytime I see a post-it note on my desk at work (thank god S doesn't leave me post-its around the house), I get all tense and think I'm being yelled at through post-it notes. PTKD - Post Traumatic Kristina Disorder.

After being chastised for coming home at 2am on a repeated basis, letting my friend use her dorm chair & not abiding by Kristina rules, I opted for other living arrangements - namely, socializing with whomever I wanted and sleeping in a different room. I was not about to sleep there on the weekends Eric was there, and since my curfew was 10pm on weeknights (ridiculous!), I just decided it was easier to avoid her completely. I'd come home and change after she went to her first class.

The clincher was one Saturday my mom came to visit. She and Eric were there, so I stayed elsewhere and came to the room to shower & change. My mom was early, and I was in the shower when she got there. Kristina told my mom that she was very "concerned" about me. She never saw me studying, and she thought I was drinking a lot.

Of course I heard about this through my mom half an hour later. "I'm doing fine, Mom. And I'm not drinking." The funny part is that I wasn't drinking. I don't know how Kristina came up with that one. Yes, I did attend the dorm parties, but I wasn't ever drinking or I'd hold one beer all night. So, yeah, she probably heard I was out and about at some party, but I rarely if ever had anything to drink. The studying thing - well, she never saw me - much less me studying. So I thought that was a hasty conclusion. Both were actually very hasty conclusions.

I do not know why, but my vague, short answer shut my mom up. I would anticipated her to harass me about it for at least an hour, but she didn't say anything about that afterward.

The next quarter I moved out and into my own room (still sharing the living area with a person in the other bedroom though). There's a bit of delayed vindication, but it's still vindication.

Miss Kristina apparently let loose a little too much one night, and she was caught drinking. She got a ticket for being a minor in possession of alcohol. I had to laugh at the irony when I heard about that.

Then... the kicker. I saw her on campus early the next quarter, and she comes up to me. "How'd you do last quarter?" I look at her kinda funny because it's out of the blue and somewhat odd. People who were with you in a class often ask how you do in a specific class, but usually people in a completely different major don't ask you how you did. So I say, "Fine." Because that's how I am. And she says, "Did you pass?" And at that point, I get it. She thinks I'm a complete dolt. So then I smile and say, "I got a 4.0." Which I did, but I don't find the need to say unless cornered by my lovely ex-roommate.

If I actually cared, I would have asked how she did. But frankly I didn't care. Until I was told by one of my friends who was a business major like Kristina that Kristina was on academic probation. How? She studied for 4 hours a day, at least. She even made flashcards and quizzed herself all the time. How could you study that much and be on academic probation? It turns out she bombed winter quarter too, and she got kicked out.

So both things she told my mom about me (her suspicion about my poor grades & my drinking) ended up really being about her. I got my vindication, and to this day I just shake my head about how it all went down.