For purely financial motives, Nate and I decided to leave our cushy two-story apartment to move in with a friend. Besides overcoming my emotional attachment to the extra large windows that looked out onto the not-so-faraway mountains, the comfort of having a relatively spacious living space, and the freedom to walk around the apartment scantily clad… I had to learn to accommodate the lifestyle and routines of another roommate.
Have I mentioned that I’m an only child?
Despite the fact that I consider myself a fairly flexible only child, there are some things that I like MY way. For example, I require a clean bathroom and clean kitchen. Punto. I get fairly distraught when the dishes are left in or around the sink for a number of days. Or if I’m the ONLY ONE who ever cleans the bathroom. Also, I like my plants to get the maximum amount of sunlight possible. And this may mean putting them in precarious places in order to obtain that sunlight. Those plus a few more peeves may encumber my ability to get along peacefully with others in an enclosed space.
Thanks to the aid of various charitable friends with cars, we moved our belongings a few hundred meters to our new home.
Our new bedroom was dirty. Dirty in the sense that it had never seen a vacuum cleaner. Dirty in the sense that it still contained belongings of the previous inhabitant. The kitchen was small and cluttered. How in the world was I to fit all of my precious cooking equipment in such a space? The apartment as a whole was dark; where were my beloved plants going to drink up their sunlight?
But in the first week of my new residence, my father was in town, so I didn’t have time to fret. After October 17th, though, I was able to come face-to-face with my problem.
Our new roommate and I had very different lifestyles. I’ll leave it at that.
Oh, the injustice I felt as I washed his dishes! Nate prepared dinner alone, while our roommate played the guitar. And after a week we found ourselves griping about our new roommate. “He never washes his dishes. He never helps out around the house. He never helps with dinner… “
So I started leaving dishes in the sink.
And I started leaving my things on the table.
And then I found out just how alike we were.
One day I came home from work. Our new roommate said something along the lines of: “ let’s try to keep the table clean, please!” He had moved all my papers into my room. So I retorted with: “let’s try to clean our dishes please!” So he retorted with “let’s try to help out instead of drinking tea all day long!” referring to Nate. So I retorted with “as I recall Nate washed all the dishes and cooked dinner before you two went trekking!” And we stopped there, realizing that we both had made good points and that, perhaps, we were not as different as we both had thought.
Since that day, we all share the work. And live happily ever after.
Sort of.
The End!
