T with Mussolini

My old roommate that I used to call H? Her name is now the Maoist. We see each other on Tuesdays to catch up and to watch our shows together. She asked me why I hated her when we lived together, and I told her that I hadn't hated her, but that it took me some time to get used to living with other people. Up until Thanksgiving of last year I was still kind of wary of my roommates. Anyway, I wanted to share a few short things from when we lived together.

(1) The watermelon. One night the Maoist and I were going to bed. We'd just gotten on our pajamas, brushed our teeth, turned off the light, crawled under the covers, the whole routine. Then,

me: the Maoist?
Maoist: Yeah?
me: I want watermelon.
Maoist: Hmmm. Okay.

And we got up and got dressed again and she drove us around town looking for watermelon, which wasn't quite in season yet, but it had been rumored that Albertson's had some. We went to three stores, and finally ended up at Ream's, where I bought a small melon and some Q-tips, and she bought some gummy bears and let me eat most of the green ones because they're her least favorite.

The thing was, I'd been thinking about watermelon for months, craving it every day, thinking about it all the time, like what happens when I get a song stuck in my head. I had yellow submarine stuck in my head for at least 8 months straight last year. I'd hum it without realizing it all of the time.

(2) The great otter pop eating contest of 2005. Somehow the Maoist and I got into an argument about who loved otter pops more. She said it was her, and I countered that an entire hemisphere of my brain was devoted to otter pops. We decided to have it out, and made plans for a contest. But how to go about it? We debated long and hard before we came up with a fitting procedure. We each bought a box of 100 otter pops, and whoever ate the most during a set period of time (one 45 minute episode of Gilmore Girls on DVD) would be the winner.

Some extreme tactics were adopted on my part, and included me drawing on the walls of her shower. I have these shower crayons I got for my birthday once, so I left her a little drawing - her stick figure frame with X's for eyes, lying in a pool of melted otter pops as my stick figure (holding an otter pop) stood triumphant and gloating over her, in her otter induced coma.

We sat in our living room for the whole affair, pausing at the start to switch some flavors with each other (I don't care much for grape or orange you see) and we sat and ate. Except that pretty soon we couldn't feel our fingers, and we were forced to eat them with our hands wrapped up in blankets. The Maoist quit after 11 otter pops, and I could have stopped there, but I was curious to see how many I could actually endure eating in 45 minutes. I'd been averaging a pop a minute in the beginning, but toward the end when the sugar started clouding my mind I slowed down a bit. In the end I ate 30. My tongue was brown from all the colors being mixed, and what's more, I couldn't feel the top of it properly for 2 or 3 days at least. What can I say - I'm a beast.

(3) The fort. I had a couple of sheets I'd gotten from somewhere so we built a fort in the living room once. And not your average couch cushion cave fort, but one of magnificent and grandiose proportions. It enveloped our sofas and reached all the way to the ceiling, serving to separate the T.V. viewing area from the rest of the living room. And it kept getting upgraded as the days went on. Sewing was involved, broom handles were used to ensure structural stability, and a great amount of push pins were secured for the whole process. It was amazing. I think it must have stayed up for a couple of weeks.

At one point the landlady came over because she wanted to show the apartment to some potential renter, but upon seeing the fort thought better of it. I'm pretty sure I know why - it's because our fort was so incredible that she didn't want the potential renter to think all the apartments were as great as ours. Surely they'd be upset upon discovering that their own apartment did not come equipped with a fort. There would be a major upheaval if she let people know what they were missing out on. That's the only explanation.

(4) I have a small blue book, called Symptoms and Illnesses that I used to read before going to bed. It amuses me still. Anyway, we used to play a game where one of us would flip through the pages until the other said stop, and you got whatever disease they landed on. That was fun. I've recently taken to carrying it in my purse and pulling it out to give people diseases. I myself had lip cancer recently.

(5) So we had some good times, even if it took me awhile to adjust. However, I'm sure she disliked me too at the start. Just looking at our room you could see the discord there - her side was organized and clean and tidy and everything good, whereas my side was very messy, with stuff covering every inch of my walls, and all sorts of crap flowing off the surface of my desk and onto the floor. And I never did my dishes, which served to annoy everyone, not just the Maoist.

Also, I was rarely home, preferring to hang out in 15 where M-Lite lived. Being away from home I just wanted to be around people I knew well. I've quite obviously known M-Lite for my whole life, and I grew up with Sliquify and MJiggle who also lived in 15. I really did consider that apartment to be my home for a time- they called me the 7th roommate. Krebscout refers to me sometimes as her almost roommate, and I in turn always forget that we haven't ever roomed together, so in my stories I always forget and call her my roommate.

It's odd to think that I almost didn't live in the old ward, as most everyone I'm friends with now I met there. I had been planning on living in the dorms, but I'm glad now that I didn't. It was a fun year in the old ward, and I'm kind of interested to see how things will turn out in the Fall as Uffish, krebscout and I move back. It won't be the same - probably not even close, but I still hope it will be incredible. We'll see.