All those years of being a Student Safety finally paid off

Sometimes I have the feeling my two roommates are trying to sabotage me. Mold appears in the area above the kitchen sink. Does anyone notice? Of course not, but when I see the mold a part of me panics. “This is a health emergency!” I think. “We can’t have mold in the kitchen! Especially so close to the sink, where we are constantly washing dishes!” Five seconds later I return to the scene with bleach*. The mold must be contained. I do my part, scrubbing away, musing to myself, “Whew, that was a close one.”

A few days later one of my roommates returns home with a space heater she has just purchased from another girl in the building. “The right side is broken but the left side works… I’m not sure if this is a fire hazard or not,” she tells me. I consider this for a few seconds and ask if the heater has instructions on it. She checks and discovers the heater clearly states that it is not to be used if one side is broken. A few days pass and I discover my roommate has taken to using the partially broken, dangerous, fire-waiting-to-happen space heater anyway. *Sigh.* First, the mold… now the risk of fire... I feel as if I must be on constant safety alert or else this apartment may not make it. Luckily, I have a copy of this book close by.


* Yes, I know bleach shouldn’t be kept in the home. Bleach is evil… I get it. However, have you seen how quickly and efficiently it kills mold? Also, I love how every time I use bleach I end up getting it on whatever I’m wearing. When I look at my spotted clothes later I am reminded of my own competency.

Where everyone goes bang-bang

A reader pointed out that I never clarified what happened with the roommate situation. (This is not the first time I’ve failed to provide a follow up to an entry in this blog. I tend to do it all the time. In my defense: there is only so much time in the day!) Here is the complete story, which should catch everyone up to date:

During the summer we were looking for a new roommate to move in for the year. The first girl signed the lease but decided she would rather live with her boyfriend. He is completing his PhD in Engineering and has a certain nerdy look about him, so it is no wonder she has fallen passionately in love. Then we found girl number two, who was a promising roommate from Taiwan, except her plans changed and the arrangement fell through. Finally, we (meaning, my roommate, L, and I) found a roommate we loved. Not only did we fall in love with her but she is not fickle. She is from Spain, quite stylish and chic, and is a grad student studying Japanese culture.

I have been doing part of my undergraduate work in Anthropology and so the two of us have quite a bit to talk about. She tells me stories of Europe and Japan. In exchange, I tell her stories about the US and how things are done. I’ve even shared how one would use slang, including phrases such as: “I'm gonna holla at ya,” or: “Let’s bounce.” It is worth mentioning: I never use such phrases in my own speech. However, there may come a day when I need to utter the words: “Let’s bounce,” instead of the much longer: “Let’s leave this place.”

I do like feeling as if I am an authority on my own culture and have all the special insight into American life. Except, the other day we ended up in a conversation regarding Texas and guns and my ability to exaggerate may have crept into the conversation... I ended up saying something along the lines of: “You see, in some states they are a little more gun-happy than others. In Texas if you are feeling blue you might just want to shoot your gun at random, sort of like a pick-me-up. That doesn’t happen here.”

I was joking when I said these words but despite this, my roommate only looked back at me in horror. She replied, “I don’t think I’ll ever go to Texas.” Suddenly I realized my careless statement had convinced her Texas is this dangerous, gun-toting state… and who knows, maybe there is truth to that statement, maybe there isn’t… but what do I know? I live in Michigan. So I spent the next half of the conversation trying to correct my mistake. “Texas is fine, it’s a safe place to visit and live… it isn’t that bad,” I reassured her. “Not everyone in Texas carries a gun. Little kids in Texas? They don’t carry guns. They have to wait until they turn eight.”

Then she brought up a point I could not refute: “But George W. Bush is from Texas.”

To this I had no reply.