Potluck Roommates: College 101

What an odd question, I remember thinking. Why would he ask that?

"My fiancee wants to know."

Oh. Right. That's why.

After my jaw bruised my chest, I covered the phone and asked no one in particular, "Do I have to go to college?"

Somebody upstairs must've cracked a rib scheming up this one. I was hand-picked to live with this guy? Carolina has, what, 15,000 undergraduate students, and I'm paired with the one reading palms and dealing tarot cards?

Don't get me wrong. I thought - and still think - nothing bad about hippies. But living with one?

"C'mon, tell me," he said, suppressing a sly grin I felt subtly mocking me from 1,000 miles away. "She's been reading about horoscopes. She'll know right away if we'll get along good."

We talked for a few more minutes. I think. I can't remember, I was so shell-shocked. I still am, despite having lived with him for a semester.

An old adage states, "You can choose your friends, but you're stuck with your family." Well, that saying forgot someone else you're randomly paired with: your freshman-year college roommate.

Now's the time to make decisions about housing contracts and future roommates, and some students haven't yet considered it.

If that's you, consider this column a friendly kick in the rear. Start thinking. Don't bypass your opportunity to control fate. Claw-grip your winning lottery ticket until you're ready to cash in.

Don't casually toss it aside and hope you'll find it later. You won't. It'll be buried somewhere beneath your new roomie's laundry. Or your new roomie's boyfriend's or girlfriend's laundry.

Then again, things might work out. But expect it to take a while.

Adjusting to a new roommate is like learning to ride a bicycle. Off to a fast start, you think you've figured it out. You fall off, try to regroup, stumble before regaining any momentum and fall again before finding a smooth ride. When it's done you've got plenty of stories to tell and scars to show.

After braving that initial conversation, I lived with Will in 821 Hinton James. Somehow. When comparing the two of us, you couldn't even resort to the famous "apples and oranges" analogy, we were that different. We wouldn't be found in the same store, much less in the same aisle.

Will believed in astrology, alternative medicine and, on occasion, illegal narcotics. To me, stars are freckles - fun to look at, but serving no purpose beside providing an endless game of connect-the-dots. I think herbal medications and mind-altering drugs are less appealing than B.O. or bad breath, so I wasn't exactly ecstatic that going potluck for a roommate had brought me a self-professed former pothead.

Will believed in true love when he was 18. So did I. Difference was, he thought he'd found it in a four-month relationship with a masseuse-in-training named Angie. Will asked Angie to marry him. I once asked a girl out on a date. Will was sure Angie was the one for him. I didn't know what I wanted for dinner, much less with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

Will's habits differed from mine, but we both adjusted. Will enjoyed the smell of burning incense, the taste of tofu and the sounds of Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues, all of which I reluctantly accepted. That's who he was, after all. Who was I to ask him to change?

Will didn't like sports, so he couldn't have been thrilled with me watching so many football and basketball games. I'd also bet he didn't appreciate my habit of procrastinating, which caused me to keep a light on late. Still, he never complained; instead, he'd politely tell me if something I did bothered him. I tried my best to do the same. I learned to pick my spots. So did he.

Despite being so different, we never argued. We went about over lives like office acquaintances who nod heads at the water cooler. Our relationship thrived on the weekends, during which we got along fantastically. Most times I had the room to myself because Will often returned to Arden, N.C., to see Angie.

Will and I slept in the same room for four months two years ago, an experience I neither regret nor forget. Isn't going away to school supposed to teach you how to accept people different from you? If so, Carolina owes me three class credits. I survived a crash course of College 101.

Truth is, living with Will was like drinking orange juice immediately after brushing your teeth. A somewhat unpleasant taste remains, but it's bearable - and certainly not nearly as bad as it initially seemed.

Will decided to take the next semester off. He said UNC wasn't for him, and he was too far from Angie - and reality, I think. He enrolled in massage-therapy school, the same one she attended. Will did what was right for him. I wished him only the best and still do.

Granted, I didn't miss him. We weren't friends. We were roommates. I had a single for the rest of the year. Every day of spring semester felt like the weekend. The room no longer smelled of incense. There wasn't any tofu in the fridge. But I'll still listen to the Moody Blues and Pink Floyd. I've found if you give them a chance, they grow on you. You might even learn to like them.

By the way, Will's a Taurus. I'm a Capricorn. Angie claimed from the start we were astrologically compatible.

Go figure.

Dan Satter admits to being the Felix of this Odd Couple. E-mail thoughts and comments to satter@email.unc.edu.