Karma

There are some things that fundamentally grate on me like a cheese grater.  They always have, they likely always will.  And what grates on me probably wouldn’t grate on someone else, but things that would annoy other people may not annoy me. 

Take my first roommate at college.  We did not get along.  Her father invented some sort of catalytic converter, so she came from money.  I got to hear all these things her parents bought her – new car, a laptop back in 1995 when they cost several thousand dollars, jewelry, hotel rooms for her and her boyfriend to get away.  (Umm yeah, my mom would have never paid for a hotel room for me as a 17 year old to stay with my boyfriend.  “When hell freezes over” would have been her response.)  The roommate’s boyfriend lived in her hometown several hours away, but fear not – she would decorate our room with tons of pictures of him, so I would be reminded of his existence every time I looked toward a wall.  And of course she and him were on the phone for hours a night, so no one else could ever use the phone.  If she wasn’t on the phone talking with him or talking about him to her roommates, she was making 3x5 index cards for her classes.  As she would tell me with that judgmental tone in her voice, “I’m here to study.”

I got to hear about her “perfect” life quite a bit, and it was really irritating to hear about.  Because if a person does have the perfect life, why does one feel to expound to the world about it?  Obviously, she felt very insecure and her way of building herself up was to pontificate about how much a) her boyfriend loves her, b) what a wonderful student she was, c) how much her parents love her. 

I had a very different approach to college dorm life.  I deliberately chose to put myself out there, for once in my life.  It indeed helped that my roommate was so aggravating that I never wanted to spend time in the room.  I played pool in the common area, went to get-togethers in people’s rooms, stayed up until all hours of the night, played video games, knew pretty much everyone in the dorm, and I kept up on all the gossip.  I knew people from all the different social groups, so whenever I went to the dining hall, I could fit in with whatever group I chose to sit with. For one time in my life, everyone knew my name.

My behavior completely aggravated my roommate.  She said I stayed out too late and wanted me to come home by 10pm.  She said I didn’t study.  She said I was seen with too many different guys and partied too much.  She started exiting roommate territory and swiftly entered nagging girlfriend/mother territory.    

I could put up with her holier than thou attitude.  I didn’t like it, but I could tune out the rhetoric.  When she started setting a curfew “for my own good” and telling me that I needed to stay home and study, then I lost it.  She had no idea what I did with my time, but she very much extrapolated & I became her slutty, alcoholic slacker roommate.  I must say that it’s very freeing to be known by one person as that because then you have been given very low expectations for behavior.  And I’m not even overanalyzing what she thought since she told my MOTHER behind my back that she was worried about my drinking, staying out late with boys, and not studying. 

When she did that, it kind of bugged me.  But honestly it didn’t come anywhere close to irritating me like being given a curfew by her did.  When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see a slutty, alcoholic slacker.  Truth was that I drank two beers in my whole dorm experience.  I’m not a drinker, have never been.  So where did she get the notion that I drank too much?  I dunno.  And the whole being seen with too many guys thing?  I didn’t know that it was against any rule to associate with more than 1 guy.  And I didn’t know that meant anything else.  But I suppose if you’re seen with playing pool with 4 guys, that means there’s orgies going on after hours.  Right?  And as for my studying, like the other items, she’s not with me 24 hours a day.  She doesn’t know when I study.  So how can she reasonably ascertain when I’m studying, what I’m drinking, and which orgies I’m attending?  Point is: she can’t.  But she thought she did, and she thought she had enough evidence to tell my mother and whoever else.

I found the whole thing funny because I knew who I was.  I wasn’t defined by what my roommate thought of me.   It’s one thing to take people’s constructive criticism and use it to grow.  It’s completely another thing to take someone’s completely off-base judgments.  Was I supposed to enroll in AA because my roommate thinks I’m an alcoholic because I have been 100% sober around her all the time, don’t exhibit any signs of drinking, and have drank 24 oz of beer spread over 4 months?  It was so ridiculous that my friends and I had to laugh about it. 

The few times that I would be in our dorm room, she’d be sitting at her desk going over her 3x5 index cards.  I would be lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling.  I’m really awesome at that, by the way.  It’s how I think, and I’m either processing the day, coming up with a list of things to do, reviewing a class lecture in my head (I have an insane memory for things like that), pondering a problem, or any number of things. 

After an hour or so of me laying there, my roommate gets angry, “Don’t you ever study?!”    

THAT really pissed me off.  Really, why should she care what I’m doing?  I’m not bugging her, not making a noise, so why do I warrant being nagged like that?  If I wanted to be nagged all day, I’d move back with my mother.  I don’t remember how I exactly responded to her, but I know it had an expletive or two in it.  I only swear out loud when I’m really angry, and I was really angry. 

So then when all of the bad juju she sent out came back to her, I was kind of amused.  She got a ticket for being a minor in possession of alcohol.  Not sure how Miss Perfect got caught, but I do know that many people told me about her being caught by the police with alcohol.  Did I ever bring it up to her?  No.  Did I call her parents and tell them that I was concerned about her drinking?  No.

When my roommate saw me on campus after the first quarter (I moved out and chose to have a single bedroom), she asked me how my grades were after the first quarter.  I had taken 19 credits that first quarter, and I had gotten A’s in all of my classes.  4.0.  I try, try, try not to be smug.  Except if you piss me off too much, and then I’ll be as mean as I can all while being perfectly polite.  So I said wistfully, “Not too bad considering it was my first quarter.”  You could see her perk up and her smugness start to take over.  Which of course meant that I could completely crush her when I said that I got a 4.0.  Ah, that felt good to see her expression.  People in the dorm told me that the roommate was on academic probation after the first quarter.  I never quite understood how a person could live in a dorm room full of 3x5 index cards that she quizzed herself on all day and still be put on academic probation, but whatever.  After her grades didn’t pick up in the next quarter, she was kicked out.  But did I ask her how SHE did that quarter?  No. 

I took from that whole roommate experience that karma may indeed exist, and that it only matters what I and the people I respect think.  It’s certainly still difficult to realize that other extraneous people may not see things how you want them to, but you have to let it go as best as you can in that situation.  I also took from that experience that the people who constantly self-promote to the point where you want to gag really ARE insecure and have a very fragile self-concept.  It’s really true and not just an elementary school witticism.  

Or my husband married a slutty, alcoholic slacker, and he hasn’t had the nerve to break it to me yet.  :-)   

After all of that, I still am most resentful about being given a curfew by her.  Of course I didn’t abide to it because how in the heck could Miss Perfect enforce a 10pm curfew when I had a key to the room?  As much as I wanted to slam every door at 3am really loudly, I didn’t.  I just never came back to the dorm room to sleep, and that probably aggravated her more than if I came in at 3am.  Sometimes I love being passive aggressive!