All the kiddos I know that went to college as freshmen this August are currently home. It has been great catching up with them about rush, dorm life and finding out exactly how they all got COVID.
In all this 6-foot catching up, it got me reminiscing on my college days. The truth is, I really didn’t love college all that much. And given the chance, I would go back and do almost everything differently. Yes, I know that would alter the course of my whole life.
I saw The Butterfly Effectwith Ashton Kutcher.
I could regale you with stories about bad decisions I made in and about college (is that a book I should be working on?) but today, I will tell you the scariest tale of them all….
The roommate.
After deciding to go to the University of Wyoming literally hours before the enrollment cut-off, I made another brave decision and decided to NOT room with anyone I knew. Look at Kollege Katie; throwing caution to the wind.
Someone should have warned Kollege Katie that the devil you know is better than the one you don’t.
In this most unfortunate lottery, I drew a girl from a REAL hick town in Wyoming. Let’s call her… Mary. I cannot even imagine a world where Mary would look me up on the Internet (or Internets as she probably calls it) to try to locate me, much less read this blog.
Mary from Hicksville, Wyoming was my roommate. At first, I was excited. We would be best friends forever! We would bunk our beds and pull all nighters together. She would drink coffee and I would drink tea, but somehow, we would make it work.
We first spoke on the phone about a month before we were supposed to move in. She called me at home and I almost died of excitement. I had written a literal list of questions to ask her because that is what all super chill, not psycho new roommates do.
My mom called me to the phone after her full-blown interrogation and I took a deep breath, ready to meet my new, lifelong best friend.
“Hi Mary, it’s Katie. I am SO excited to meet you!” I paused to let that sink in as the first words her best friend for life would ever speak to her….
“Hey.”
I’m sorry, what? Hey? And it was spoken in either an octave only dogs can hear or she was a mouse. Great, I was going to college and rooming with the female Stuart Little.
“Oh, hey. Are you there? It sounds like you cut out a little.”
Teed that up for her like any best friend would….
“No. It’s fine.”
Cool, cool, cool. You know what is not fine? This conversation.
I went on to completely overtake the conversation. Maybe she was worn out from talking to my Mom for so long. There is something about very Southern people living among the people of Wyoming: it’s awful. Wyoming persons are slow and quiet. Southern people are not. It’s not the adorable Odd Couple.
But, trying to overcompensate, as I would clearly be the Bette Midler to her Barbara Hershey, I took over and began asking my lengthy list of questions.
All one-word answers.
Until I got to “Do you think you will go through rush?”
She paused, I assumed to get SUPER jazzed about us being roomies and sorority sisters….
“What’s that?”
Oh, come on. I cannot carry this whole friendship.
We ended what I guess technically was a conversation, but sure didn’t feel like one. I went sobbing to my Mom to tell her I had gotten a FULL blown dud. Normally, this is where my Mom would say that it was me being silly, that surely we would be better in person, blah blah, but no. She said none of that. She said. “Kates, I got the same feeling.”
Ok.
I had about a month to tell myself maybe she wasn’t a phone person or maybe she was shy. Nevertheless, I kept the arrangement and proceeded to move in in early August where we could meet face-to-face and sort this whole thing out. What a laugh we would get out of this later.
Arrival day in Laramie and, not to brag, but I was now living in the tallest building in Wyoming. All 12 floors. We were on the 10thfloor and to this day my Dad will gladly tell you what a pain in the tail that was. My parents and I were in the room setting up as much as we could, since I didn’t know how Mary would want to arrange our penthouse palace when in she walked….
What the….?
Hell no.
She wasn’t a hick at all. No overalls or straw cowboy hat. No big ass barrel racing belt buckle. No corncob pipe or plaid shirt.
She was a Princess.
A for real life princess.
Mary brought in all her pageant trophies. She had won everything in Hickville and nowhere else. County Queen, Rotary Queen, Queen of Corn. Cream of Corn. She had won them all. Mary also brought in not one thing that wasn’t pink. She brought in an ENTIRE moving box full of nail polish and manicure supplies. Mary had SILK sheets and pillowcases, some Laura Ashley/Jackson Pollock fever dream comforter and her BABY BLANKET that she called Softie. First of all, shut up. No one brings their baby blanket to college. Secondly, she was quick to tell me it was spelled “Sawftee” because she couldn’t say “Softie” when she was little. Wasn’t that funny?
No. Not in any universe is that funny. Not even if you were a fat toddler dressed like Chris Farley telling me this story. That is not now and will never be funny. Under the common definition that you an I both know to mean “Funny.”
She unpacked make-up in a caboodle (before they were retro and when they were just sad), tapes and CD’s that were basically just a list of “All the Artists past and present Katie Thomas hates,” and more Ramen than you should be allowed to buy without having to present a government issued ID. But what she unpacked last of all was the worst.
Hot rollers.
Mary, was a hot roller.
Now listen, I love big hair as much as the next girl, but this was TOO much. Welp, this was Kollege Katie and her fancy pants princess roommate.
From there, it got weirder and worse.
Mary had a whole bedtime routine; like my Gran did at the time. Shower with a shower cap, buff, sparkle and shine her nails EVERY night. No lie, those digits got a fresh coat of paint on the regular. She applied face masks and hair treatments each night. When she didn’t fully chemically treat her hair, she hot rolled it, pinned it and slept in a special cap for hot rolled pin curls. Like Little House on the Damn Prairie. She was in her full robe at 7:00PM after her shower that lasted at least 45-minutes. Name one person who took a 45-minute shower in college that WASN’T trying to sober up before their parents arrived. NO ONE.
Mary didn’t drink. Which is fine, but when I put the rest of a 6-pack in the fridge, she didn’t love it. She kept her face masks in the fridge, but I couldn’t keep 3 Bud Light’s.
Mary woke at the CRACK of dawn (like everyone in college, right?) and power walked the quad. I have been and always will be a big fan of the power walk. But Mary did it in full grey sweats on top and bottom with white tennis shoes and ankle weights. She was about 5’9 and might have weighed 115 soaking wet, but she had to get that walk in daily. In what I assumed were prison issued sweats and tennis shoes. OMG; had Mary been to Hickville Prison? Probably. And probably for her aerosol crimes against the environment. Mary was a BIG Aussie hairspray fan.
She also loved Pantene. So much, that she spared NO drop. When one bottle was empty, she would turn it upside down and leave it to fall so she could get every ounce of that glue coated goodness. At about December, she left one like that over the holiday. We came back in January to a pile of congealed Pantene. When I mentioned it to her, she said, “Oh, I’ll get it later.” But later never came. And I never cleaned it up. I just lived with it out of spite. To this day you cannot convince me that isn’t the reason I have sometimes asthma.
Mary didn’t like much. She didn’t like Friendsor The Real World.She liked shows like Touched by an Angel and Highway to Heaven that could only be found on our campus TV channel that had to air only non-offensive and/or student produced material. She HATED music. Well, except her music. Which if you read and like this blog, I think would agree is not music. Mary did love to cook. In a dorm room. She existed on Ramen and diet tab, which I still assume was decades old because has tab even been around since the 70’s? And wasn’t all tab diet? Mary did love to “treat” herself and make tacos and s’mores on the hot plate. Yes, at the same time. She loved to read and what she read was trashy romance novels. But when I had to read The Bell Jar again for a Women’s Studies Class, she asked me if I felt like the university was putting “sinful ideas in my head.”
Which made it all clear: Mary was a prude.
Until a month after school had started and her boyfriend moved in. Thankfully, not into our dorm. Frankly, it was a little crowded with me, Mary, Softie, all the stuffed animals she had ever been gifted or won at a state fair and her hot rollers.
He had his own room.
Because he had been a last minute transfer to play soccer, he had gotten a single room. And frankly, to this day, I could kiss him on the mouth for that.
Let’s call him Ryan.
Ryan was here to save the day and suddenly, Mary wasn’t . She was FULL BLOWN shacked up with Ryan in his single dorm. All that was left was me, her least favorite stuffed animals and the Pantene glob.
And where I thought it would be quiet, it was, but it was also SO much better. There had been no way I could have lived an entire semester there with her. Let’s be honest; I almost killed her the weekend Princess Diana died and I cancelled everything in my whole life to watch days of her funeral. “Are you going to watch this all day?”
Her funeral or yours, Mary. Make a choice.
Mary came back occasionally for supplies; more cans of hairspray, additional Pantene products and more nail polish remover. Her mom would send her HUGE care packages once a month filled with what I assumed were the products of her robbing a Sally Beauty Supply for Mary. She would float in, grab a few things and then leave.
Thankfully, I made some good friends and a best friend that year. My best friend lived on the 6thfloor where I lived on 10. The first time she took me to her room, I was floored. They had bunked their beds, set up a cute desk area, they had made a makeshift “kitchen” where no one cooked tacos or s’mores on a hot plate. These two were sharing clothes and pinning inspirational quotes on the mirror for each other and they were really becoming best friends.
No. THIS is what I had signed-up for.
Even further insult to injury, they hadn’t known each other when they moved in.
I resolved myself to living single the rest of the year and it was ok… Mary eventually asked me to “cover for her” with her “Ma” because she thought Mary might be spending the night with Ryan.
Uh, Ma, is it? If Mary isn’t pregnant with Ryan’s baby by the end-of-the-semester, it will be a Maybelline Miracle.
Mary and Ryan did have a short break-up around February. I showed up one day after class and found her, in her sleep mask, lying on the bed sobbing and listening to Enya. Remember Enya? Exactly. She told me everything which was surprising and uncomfortable. She asked me for a hug, which if she had taken the time to get to know me, she would know I hate. I knew I would regret it, but I asked if she wanted to talk about what lead to the break-up. If I am lying, I am dying, she told me through her tear stained face that it was because he didn’t want to name a daughter McKaylie.
No one does, Mary. No one. Not even your perfect Ryan.
But, it tracked. And for days I got to live with Sad Mary. She actually took a few days off from hot rollers and nail painting and looked sort of age appropriate for 1998.
As soon as it was off, it was on again. He had come around on McKaylie. And I had to take back all the terrible things I had said about him. And the name McKaylie. And to show they were stronger than ever, she cooked for him. She made tacos and s’mores on our hotplate; which I assume was to get back at me for hating on the name McKaylie so hard. Do not ever ask me if I want a s’more. Unless you want to see PTSDKT.
That night, Ryan spent the night in our room. Which meant lights out at 10 and then falling asleep to the 32 things they liked most about each other. Why 32 you ask? Because they had been together 32-months, obviously. I slipped down to my friends on the 6thfloor because there was no way I was going to get past #4 or 5 without committing a hate crime.
I hadn’t gotten the roommate situation I had wanted. What I got was “Holy crap! Does that girl have hot rolled hair?” Yeah, that’s my roommate. She starts with the larger rollers on the outside and works her way down to the smaller… she doesn’t use the very little ones… OMG WHAT AM I SAYING?!?!? All my dreams of a lifelong best friend roommate had been removed like Mary’s yesterday nail polish.
Truthfully, the whole year had been a bust and I decided to transfer. Mary found me in our/my room one day and asked about my plans for next year. I told her I was transferring and wished her the best. She said, “I’m really gonna miss you.”
WHAT.
Miss what? The tacos and s’mores we never shared? All the crap I watch on TV? My straight, refusing to hot roll hair? What are you going to miss, Mare Bear? The nickname I never got to give her…
I like to think that she and Ryan got married and are living in Hickville, Wyoming. She, a teacher at a cult school and him coaching soccer for blind dogs. They live in a little house painted Barbie pink and have 4 girls named MyKennifer, McKacey, McKaphanie and, of course, McKaylie.
I gave it the old college try. I did. And it failed. But Mary taught me a lot about life, living with people that aren’t my family and personal grooming. What I didn’t learn, was from my mistakes.
Because I transferred across the country and did it all over again.
But that is another roommate for another day.
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