Welcome to Your New Home

The road trip was brutal. Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, I would have gladly slept through, but once you cross the border into California, you immediately realize why everyone wants to live there, and why people pay so much money to do so. When God created North America, he must have started full of enthusiasm at the West Coast, spending an elaborate amount of time creating a detailed masterpiece for the first 500 miles or so. Then he apparently went on vacation and delegated the next 2,000 miles to an intern, before picking back up at, I don’t know, maybe Pennsylvania.

I would have liked more time to take some detours, but the countdown to orientation was winding down. I finally arrived at my destination the night before orientation started. It was around midnight, too late to check into my campus apartment, so I spent one last night in a cheap motel. The next morning, I filled out some forms and got the key to my new apartment, but when I got to the door, it was already open.

“Hello?” I called out.

“Hello,” a guy answered with that California accent normally associated with surfers. He didn’t look like a surfer though. He had big ears and eyes about one centimeter apart from each other.

After a certain age, it is simply dangerous to randomly pair people up to be roommates. It makes for a frightening yet interesting experience freshman year of college, and almost works as a pedagogical element of college life – learning to live with someone from a different background, social class, or country. But by the time you get to law school, you are way past that bullshit. At that age, there is nothing educational about finding someone else’s pubic hair in your bar of soap.

I had signed up to live in campus housing because I didn’t have the time or the desire to go apartment hunting. Then, I was a little taken aback when, after all the paperwork had been finalized, I realized I had volunteered to live with a random roommate. I received the information about the apartment that had been assigned to me, and among the dimensions and amenities, as if he were a dishwasher, my roommate’s name and contact information appeared. At least it was a moderately big apartment, and we each had separate rooms. But I get annoyed when the person next to me in an airplane takes my armrest. And now I would be sharing a kitchen, living room, and bathroom with a man I had never met. The thought of this made me hyperventilate.

Not surprisingly, my roommate and I would grow to hate each other. But that was a few months away, when the stress of looming exams would make him irritable and cause him to find fault in everything I did. Actually, upon first meeting, I was pretty grateful to have him as a roommate, because by the time I moved in, he had furnished and outfitted the entire place.

He gave me a tour and showed me everything he had already contributed, “I brought a TV, DVD player, stereo, surround sound speakers, dishes, silverware, pots and pans, an air purifier, and . . . well that’s about it.”

I realized at that moment that I was not a man with much property to my name.

“Uhm. I just brought my clothes,” I said, a little ashamed, as I pointed to one of my garbage bags sitting by the door. “And my guitar.”

A few seconds of awkward silence ensued, and I could tell he was disappointed I had not brought anything of communal use. Then I remembered something, and my eyes lit up.

“Oh yeah. I brought a George Foreman grill.”

He was not impressed. He showed me his nice propane grill which sat in our patio. Maybe, I thought, we’ll balance each other out and get along. He’ll be the responsible one with all the material possessions, and I’ll be the lovable slacker, occasionally contributing a song from my guitar. It didn’t quite work out that way. But it was the first day of orientation, and with no idea of what lay ahead, anything seemed possible.