Houghton College Retrospective #2: Roommates

(Note: This blog walks a very fine line of compassionate perspective in writing versus being very truthful with my impressions from the period 29 years ago)

How many of you remember filling out the survey before freshman year to help the college line you up with a compatible roommate in the dorm? I don’t really remember filling out the form, or anything specific about it, but I do remember trying to be as accurate as possible to get a good match.

And then I got to college, in Shenawana Hall, and met my first roommate, David. We were housed on second floor, on the front side, at the far end from the floor lounge. As I read it today, it seems that I almost immediately began to wonder if this person I was matched with had filled out his application honestly, or if the person pairing us up hadn’t bothered to read the applications before making room assignments (It isn’t anywhere in my journal from the time, but perhaps we were the final applications left, the oddballs after everyone else matched up well, that they threw together). He seemed amiable enough, but our taste in waking vs. sleeping hours,  music and volume levels, just didn’t seem to match up AT ALL.

In the light of 29 years distance, reading my own writing, I wonder how I must have appeared to him. My own notes from the period are quite one-sided when talking about him. A specific example I want to bring up I copy below, because it feeds into the next stage of my roommate saga:

Nov. 18, 1984

I couldn’t believe it. I had turned on my tape player with the volume set low, turned off the lights and gone to bed.  David came in and turned on one of his records. After laying there for a while I turned mine up, and he turned up. A few more minutes were by before I turned off my take and spoke.

“David, I handled this wrong, but we have to talk.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I had my music on when you came in, they you turned yours on.”

“Sure, I thought you were going to sleep listening to yours so I was going to go to sleep listening to mine. Yours doesn’t bother me.”

I had thought that perhaps he hadn’t heard my music, I had it so low. Rather, he had heard and had turned his on anyways. Maybe his music doesn’t mind other music going at the same tie, but mine does.

“Oh forget it,” I said. Getting my earplugs out of the drawer I put them in. They cut all sound, David’s music was quiet enough.

This was followed 2 days later by:

Nov. 20, 1984

Last night I had gone to bed at 9:52 p.m. EST. Waking up at 12:09 I see David’s carpet is gone. The computer photo of Sandy and Jim was on the door to the other closet. I looked around, taking a more careful evaluation. Sure enough, Jim had moved in and David out. He (Jim) came in a few minutes later with the last of his things. Certainly I would have awaken during their moving but for the earplugs I had used last night.

And so here we both are this morning. Lord may this be right, may it work out.

Thus my first college roommate and I didn’t mesh, so without discussing it with me, and I am not sure whether they discussed it with the R.A.’s or anyone else, David moved out and Jim moved it.

Jim was a better match in how we could get along in ignoring each other. We certainly didn’t move around in the same social circles. I remembered being fascinated by the seeming carefree way he dealt with everything.  One weekend he went over to Olean and came back with an entirely new stereo system.  When I asked him how he could just go out and spend money like that, he said “My dad can pay for my education here in an afternoon’s surgery.” (His dad was an eye surgeon.)

What I didn’t remember, but see as I read my journals, is that he seemed to have a troubled family life that I worried about. He would also disappear for long periods of time and then show back up without my having any idea what he was up to.

But we made it through the rest of that year as roommates, and then came the time to choose roommates for sophomore year.  Jim was going to room with someone else, and I was left to find someone else. But I didn’t really have any prospects in mind.  Oh, there was one person, Matthew, but there was also one reason I wasn’t sure I wanted him for a roommate.

You see, earlier in the year, he had pulled this particular, spectacular stunt on his roommate Dan.  He had moved all of Dan’s stuff out of the room, and into the lounge. So while we seemed to get along in most ways, I really wasn’t sure I wanted to risk experiencing something like that. Yet when he asked if I wanted to be his roommate, I decided to say yes.  So we went together to the room drawing, and managed to get the same room on second floor, near the entrance, that he had freshman year.

It took until the beginning of sophomore year for Matthew to tell me that he had promised himself that he wasn’t going to pull a stunt like he did on Dan. I remember feeling relieved when he said that. And that was that as far as roommates were concerned.  Matthew and I roomed together for the next three years, two more at Shenawana, and the final, senior year off-campus at Havenwood.