Adventures In Cohabitation have to worry about my dog stabbing me because I quit watching Animal Planet.
I first discovered the challenges of cohabitation when I went to college and was assigned a total stranger as a dormmate. We could not have been more different. He was the star of a championship football team, while I was the star of a really crappy blues band. He spent an hour each day blow-drying his feather-cut hair into perfection, while I spent a second tying mine back into a ponytail. We had totally different taste in clothes, music, and women, but by the end of the semester I believe we both had learned something from each other, if nothing else, respect. Although I got along with him, I found dorm life (i.e., public showers) did not agree with me, so I got my family doctor to write a note stating I needed a special diet and could no longer live in the dorm (I am not suggesting any readers follow my deceptive example).
By Steven Kent McFarlin (AKA Spanky)
(NOTE: In the following tales the names have been omitted to protect the guilty.)
I know I am not an easy person to live with. I know because sometimes I hate my boss...and I am self-employed. I know because I am aware of my many idiosyncrasies that I try to hide from others; for example, if I am picking up a newspaper or magazine from a stack, I will always grab the second one, because someone might have already thumbed through the one on top and a “used” publication is just gross. I suspect that everyone has their own set of peculiar preferences. I once dated a girl that would become unhinged if she saw someone eat a cookie or hamburger upside down (the flat side on top).
Another one of my eccentricities is an extreme aversion to other’s body parts that are not still attached; seeing someone’s hair on my bar of soap or stepping barefoot on their toenail clipping makes me freak-the-f-out! I can love someone from head to toe as long as all the parts of their head and toe remain connected (which is why I never visit leper colonies). It is for this reason my current roommate is my all time favorite, a Boston Terrier that does not shed or clip its toes.
It is not easy to live with a creature as complicated as a human. In fact, it can be downright dangerous; a Google search for “murder over TV remote” yields 3,640,000 hits. This is yet another reason I have not had a two-legged roommate in years, sure they don’t need to be walked, but I never
My two best friends and I pooled our funds and rented a duplex apartment. Unfortunately by the time we paid the first and last months rent we had no money leftover for our utility deposits, so we spent the first few weeks basically camping out...indoors. Eventually we got so desperate we resorted to a life of crime, stealing electricity by running an extension cord from our neighbor’s front porch light into our living room, powering our TV, stereo, and lamp. Soon after we found their hot water heater drain and ran a hose through our toilet window so we could take much needed baths. Just as soldiers in foxholes tend to get along, we had very little fighting between us since we were too busy battling poverty.
My next set of roommates was a different story. I should probably explain that I am a bit of a neatnik. I make my bed every morning, even when I am in hotels that provide maids for that chore. I believe having order in my home life allows me to be wild in my creative life, but my new roommates did not share my philosophy. They, like many men I’ve met since, lived liked bears. This is best illustrated by noting that one had a pet rabbit he did not keep in a cage because his room was such a mess he could not find where the creature was pooping. This was not a normal rabbit. It had been given to my roommate by a lab that had used the animal to test psychopharmaceutical drugs, as a result it was more of a cross between a bunny and a Pit Bull. We became accustomed to its agro behavior, however when our landlord paid an unexpected visit and the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog (nod to Python fans) chased her around the room, we received an eviction notice the following morning. My next experiment in cohabitation was my first with the opposite sex. My girlfriend and I decided
6, CAMPUS ACTIVITIES MAGAZINE®, APRIL 2014
since we spent most every night together we could save money by sharing a place. This got me disowned by my religious parents who deemed the arrangement as “living in sin.” When I look back on the arrangement, I deem it as the smartest thing I ever did. Not to offend anyone’s religious beliefs, but the one eternal truth I would bet my life on is: You never really know someone until you live with them!
Throughout our courtship, my girlfriend had hidden her kitchen skills (or lack thereof) by ordering food from restaurants, and placing it in her pans before I would arrive for dinner. She would then serve it up as if she had prepared the meal. But this practice was impossible once we moved in together and her culinary handicaps soon became evident. She once asked me for my recipe for quiche. I instructed her not to try to make a piecrust, but just buy one pre-made from the store. She returned from the market with a Graham Cracker piecrust. On another occasion, she asked for the recipe for French toast. I entered the kitchen to see that rather than dip the bread in the batter, she had placed the bread in the skillet and poured the batter on top, creating what appeared to be a huge pancake with squares in it. At a party we hosted, I kept hearing strange drumming sounds emanating from the kitchen. After a search I found they were originating from the oven. She was baking chicken wings in Tupperware, and the chicken was falling through the melting plastic and hitting the bottom of the oven with a metallic thud. Near the end of our cohabitation I noticed a large pot of spaghetti sauce boiling like lava. Next to it was an empty jar of Ragu. When I mentioned to her that all you have to do with Ragu is warm it up, she replied, “I know, but I forgot to brown the meat before I put it in.” She was cooking the meat by boiling it in the sauce!
Although our experiment with living together failed quickly (for reasons other than cooking) we parted on friendly terms. I know that had I yielded to my parent’s demands we marry before we shack up, I would now be divorced or dead from botulism or salmonella. This would probably be okay with her, since as I stated earlier, I am not an easy person to live with. As I overheard an elderly woman tell her husband, “If I’d killed you when I first wanted to I’d be out of prison by now.” Steven Kent McFarlin (AKA “Spanky”) has been described by the press as a “campus entertainment icon.” He offers two great events at one great low price, and has been voted “Campus Comic of the Year” (LaffGuru.com) and the “Campus Performer of the Year” (TalkingAboutMyGeneration.com). His credits include over fifty TV appearances, including: Showtime, Good Morning America, and The Late Show. He is represented by GP Entertainment.
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