Cool Cherry Cream

You got no money and you, you got no home

So. DeCew it is. Great. The one residence with a shared bathroom with the entire floor. The residence where double rooms are "generally reserved for Year 1 students". Whoop-dee-freaking-doo.

"A roommate is good!" people tell me, "especially for people like you who are shy. It helps you to develop social skills, which are needed for every job!".

No. Social skills are not required for any job. Communication skills are, and I can communicate just fine when I want to. I don't have to be social. I don't have to know the proper etiquette for discussing the "American Idol" results every Thursday morning around the water cooler.

It's a common misconception that not being social means that something is wrong with you. It's not. Some people just like to be alone. There is nothing wrong with that. If you, like me, like to be alone, don't let anyone make you be social. Don't let anyone try to fix you. You can't fix what ain't broken.

I don't want a roommate for mine or their sake. My roommate will almost certainly not like me because I am not a fun or talkative person. So Brock, in case you're listening, don't put me with someone else. I'm only thinking of them.

I don't want to wear headphones all year! I want to listen to my music through the speakers. I don't want to have to turn it off just because my roommate doesn't like old fogey music. I want to be able to sing along and dance when I finally manage to get that project to compile. I don't want to surpress my happiness just because my roommate wouldn't understand.

I don't want to stay up all night! I like to sleep. I like to go to sleep early. I don't want my roommate coming in, having friends over, and/or doing homework late at night. I want to be sleeping.

I don't want a silly optimistic social butterfly who wants to hang out all the time and do fun stuff.

God. I can see her now. "What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong?"

NOTHING IS WRONG. I. AM. ALWAYS. LIKE. THIS!

You would not believe how many times people ask me this. Many more times than when something is actually wrong. "What's wrong? Are you sad? Are you mad? What's the matter?" Nothing is the matter, I just always look like this. Just because I'm not smiling and laughing doesn't mean that I'm sad. It's just means I don't feel like smiling and laughing.

I was so looking forward to it, having my own little room where I could put up my posters and decorate it all myself. A nice four-sided room, not a nine-sided awkwardly shaped room with a sloped ceiling. A nice little square room all to myself. Sure, I've always had a room to myself. But this could be a special room. Now, I'm going to have to share it with someone else. Someone who's going to put up pictures of 50 Cent and My Chemical Romance and Zac Efron and point at my poster of four men with beards or no shoes crossing the street and ask "who are they?".

I guess I'm just going to have to find my own little spot somewhere else on campus. Somewhere like the library, the computer lab. Somewhere that I can be alone. I'll just use my room for sleeping and getting dressed. The rest of the time, I'll just be a wandering gypsy. Kind of a ripoff, since I'm paying for the room and all. Maybe I should just bring a mattress with me instead and plop it down under a bridge or something.

It's nice to have a place you can call your own, where you can just relax and do nothing. Now, I'll just have to do that in public. In public. Where people can come up and ask me "what's wrong?" and I can't just lock the door on them.

Plus, DeCew is the oldest residence, so it's more worn-out than the others. I read someone who said it was freezing in the mornings. Beautiful.

The only good thing I can think of is that the dining hall is in my building, meaning I won't have to walk over somewhere else to get food every day. But now I'm also reading that the food is terrible at Brock. But then again, I don't eat like normal people do, so I don't know how that will work out.

Well, if co-op hadn't already decided it, I'm fairly certain I won't be staying in residence past the first year. Not with my luck.