Thanks to my friends at Netflix, my Wednesday night was spent with a wonderful movie spoken exclusively in French.
Fortunately, “The Class” had English subtitles so I could actually follow what was going on. It also had a lead actor who looked far too much like my roommate from freshman year of college.
For those of you who didn’t live in at Susquehanna University’s Smith Hall room 315, here’s what my roommate Shawn looked like.
Of course, that Shawn is not to be confused with the other kid named Shawn I lived with for the other three years at SU. For clarity sake, I’ll refer to them as Shawn R. (freshman year) and Shawn L. (sophomore, junior & senior years).
Life with Shawn R. was definitely an experience. When we first talked on the phone a few weeks before we moved in, I quickly figured out we weren’t really running in the same circles. He asked what stuff I was planning on bringing and I mentioned my Sega Dreamcast.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s a video game system.”
“Oh.”
The biggest thing you need to know about Shawn R., he was very neat. I mean, I may be considered a neat freak by regular standards, but living with Shawn R. made me feel like a slob.
He was also from Maine, which meant that on short breaks–the 3 and 4-day weekends–he didn’t go home. I got back to our dorm after one of those breaks and noticed my bed was made. I didn’t think much of it, though I probably made my bed twice the whole year. Then I got an IM from my friend Mindy, who happened to live just down the hall with Shawn R.’s girlfriend.
“Notice anything about your room?”
“Um, no….”
“Look at your bed.”
“My bed is made.”
“He MADE your bed!”
Apparently, after a day or so of sitting in our room and looking at my unmade bed, Shawn R. just couldn’t stand it anymore and had to make it. That’s what I call neat. Though maybe I should have expected something like that from a freshman male who mopped our floor on several occasions.
That made the Sprite incident all the more interesting.
Mindy and I frequently ordered food with Shawn L. and ate down in her room. After one of our meals arrived, I went back to my room to grab a plastic bottle of Sprite from our fridge. It was the last one, so I opened my closet and grabbed two more bottles so there would be a cold one for later.
And then it happened. I used my left hand–already holding two bottles–to close the closet door. Like the genius that I am, I also left part of my hand in the quickly closing door. The door and my hand tried to occupy the same space, which resulted in quite a deal of pain. It also caused my hand to forget it was holding two plastic bottles, sending them crashing to the ground.
One of the bottles was unharmed. The other exploded. Actually, I’m not sure exploded is the right word. There may not be a word for what happened to the contents of that bottle. The second–and I mean iota of a second–the bottle hit the ground, a slit the size of a splinter opened up in the bottom. In an instant, Sprite mist coated every corner of the room. I barely had time to blink. My eyelid started to come down, my eye looking over a perfectly clean room. By the time it closed and reopened, the clear, sticky mess was everywhere.
The ceiling was covered with little dots of soda. The mirror on the other side of the room looked like I had just sprayed it with some sort of cleaner. My shirt looked like I had just been hit in the chest with a water balloon. Shawn R.’s CD rack looked like I had dumped the bottle all over it. His computer screen…his desk…you get the picture.
I had to make the long walk back to Mindy’s room with a sense of utter dread. Not only was I not going to be enjoying my food, but now I also had to borrow all available cleaning supplies and spend the rest of my day scrubbing.
I’d be willing to bet there’s still a fine mist of Sprite on the ceiling in Smith 315.
