Column: Me, your roommate

Welp:

Absolutely, definitely, completely not taken from the pages of my roommate's diary:

"Oh, you again. Don’t you have somewhere better to be? Oh right, you live here. The Roommate. Today I very nearly forgot that you existed for a full four minutes, before you began singing ‘Mr. Brightside’ at I’m-the-star-of-an-opera volume as you showered.

"Omnipresent and yet surprisingly elusive when I want you to take out the trash, The Roommate is often misunderstood. For good reason, too — The Roommate is full of paradoxes. How do I hear you or smell you almost constantly, despite the fact that I almost never see you? How could I have lived with you for a month now but I honestly don’t know what color hair you have? Am I what you are to me, to you? 

"Oh, Roommate. Most of what I know about you is, like an archeologist trying to understand the customs of an ancient civilization, based on long-abandoned artifacts. Also like the ancients, most of these artifacts are dishes and ceramics, long forgotten to time and daylight under a stack of other dishes, pots and pans in the very full, very bad smelling, sink.

"From the ample quantity of crusted dishes, I can infer you had oatmeal once back in late July. Further testing should confirm whether it was apple cinnamon or maple brown sugar flavor. Or perhaps it was a rice dish that is now much older, browner and squishier than it had been in its original state. From a scientific perspective, one is at a loss for how you could create such filth through cooking while simultaneously keeping alive such a teeming bacterial colony in an ever-expanding miniature shantytown of old takeout containers.

"From the sheer quantity of hair present in the drain, I can only assume that you molt like a snake, but like, somehow more; as if multiple snakes grew out of your head. I am also relatively certain that the clot of hair has grown strong enough that it now has a pulse, a will to live and long-term career goals. Oh Medusa, do you own a comb? 

"Likewise, I deduce from your violently squeaking bed that you have an active sex life, one that seems to strictly coincide with the hours of my would-be REM sleep. 

"That’s it for today. If I had to rate The Roommate out of five, I would definitely say a two. I would say lower but at least The Roommate respects my personal space and belongings — you know how there are horror stories about them going through your desk and reading your diary or looking through a peephole into your room or whatever. At the least, the respect is there. I’m lucky for that — gotta be thankful for the little things. Ok, journal, until tomorrow!”

opinion@dailytarheel.com