FROM THE EDITOR FROM EDITOR THE COLLEGE ROOMMATE
L
ong before Facebook — when private lives were still mostly “private” — part of the excitement entering your freshman year of college was the mystery of that first roommate. In the summer of 1994, all I knew heading into my first semester was the name of the guy who’d be the first non-family member to share living quarters with me. We’ll call him Jerry. We’d be friends, I had no doubt. He’d like video games. We’d watch football together on Saturdays and Sundays. He’d have a girlfriend, and she’d introduce me to her roommate. We’d hit it off. Twenty years later, Jerry and I would vacation with our families and complain about our guts while staring at burgers on the grill, our kids smacking our legs with whiffle ball bats. Yep. I had big plans for Jerry, even if all I had to go on was a white index card with his name and hometown in dot matrix ink. Then came August. I finally met Jerry. He’d already made himself at home in our 12-by-15 closet of a dorm room at my small university in the piney woods of East Texas. As I walked in carrying a laundry basket of freshly folded school clothes — my new backpack slung over my shoulder — Jerry was wearing a long-sleeved hoodie (it was 90 degrees that day), facing the window and doing Rockyinspired calisthenics while blasting Guns-NRoses at Volume 10. He was unaware of my presence. When he did realize he was no longer alone, Jerry turned around and dropped the hoodie. “Hey,” he said with a nod. “Jerry. Too loud?” “Nah,” I gulped, setting my basket on my bed. Jerry wasn’t what I imagined. Jerry was odd. Jerry was also 30. I was crushed. Gone was this grand idea of whom my first college roommate would be — one of those people it’s a given will have an impact on your life, like a kindergarten teacher, first girlfriend, your cool uncle or that one coach who always believed in you. And before you think this story ends with me finally realizing I shouldn’t have judged a book by the cover — before you think 30-year-old Jerry turned out to be a great friend and even a
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mentor, let me stop you. Jerry was everything you imagined a 30-yearold college freshman with no car who chose to stay in freshman dorms rather than an apartment would be. He was quiet and to himself. He didn’t like the lights or my TV on in the room after 10 (if I wanted to study late, which happened occasionally, I went to the lobby). I had to drive him to the grocery store every other weekend if his parents weren’t in town. He had a habit of deleting voicemails without telling me (pre-cellphone era). He did the weird calisthenics thing. Granted, he wasn’t all bad. His age was a benefit for reasons I won’t go into here. Overall, he was a nice guy. We had lunch occasionally. But we were square pegs. And for a kid who had big ideas of what his college experience was going to be — and someone who hoped his roommate would be that first friend in a strange land full of strange people — Jerry was a disappointment. But here’s the happy ending you expected a few paragraphs earlier. That friend I hoped Jerry would be — I met him the following year. We didn’t share a dorm room, but he lived on my floor, just down the hall. He was my age. Like me, he grew up in a small East Texas town. Divorced parents. Played football. Owned a Sega Genesis. We’ll call him Toby. By incredible coincidence, both of our careers led us to North Carolina. This summer — 22 years after we met — our families shared a beach house for a few days, and at one point, we found ourselves standing over a grill, watching burgers and dogs cook while debating the use of lighter fluid versus coals already soaked in it. Our kids played nearby. One of them smacked me in the leg with a bat.
Billy Liggett Editor, Campbell Magazine