I love my roommate.  She once had a migraine, and I dropped the work that I was doing and went out late at night to walk over a mile to her apartment to take care of her.  Should she ever need an organ, I would gladly and without hesitation proffer one of my own.  However, she frequently makes me want to hit her with a ladle.  When I say frequently, I mean every day.  When I say every day, I mean every night.  Right before she goes to bed.

This is what my evenings with my roommate are like, every single evening:

I’m not kidding.  Every night.  Don’t get me wrong, I have my own obsessive-compulsive tendencies.  In fact, she and I even share a few (like checking our alarm clocks approximately eight times before we go to bed).  This, though, is ridiculous.  I can drag her into the kitchen, show her the oven, get her to admit that everything is turned off and then she will still check it later or ask me to check it.  I can understand an alarm clock getting turned off.  Power outages happen.  Sometimes cords are accidentally unplugged.  If you use a cell phone, maybe your phone accidentally died or you somehow turned it off.  To my knowledge, ovens cannot spontaneously turn on by themselves.  I mean, I can’t say for sure with new ovens; for all I know, they have sensitive touch pads that could be triggered by heavy breathing.  Our oven, on the other hand?  It has dials, and not only that, but it has dials that you have to push in order to turn them.

Tonight, before she went to bed, she asked me if I would check the oven.  I sighed, knowing that she had just checked the oven.  I flippantly said sure, knowing full well that I had no intention of checking the oven.  I learned that it’s better to humor her so that she can sleep without fear that our apartment is going to blow up whilst we slumber.  Usually, that’s enough to get her to drop it, but tonight she seemed to either finally recognize that I had no intention of checking the frigging oven or she was particularly concerned about the oven that we didn’t use this evening because we never ate dinner (ok, scratch that, we did use the stove to boil water for tea).  She asked, “Do you promise to check it?”  Now, this is what caught me, because I don’t make promises unless I can keep them.  I don’t like breaking promises, ever.  I won’t if I can help it, and I think she bloody knows it.  I squirmed a bit, pouted and petulantly said, “I don’t want to.”  She just got closer to me and asked me again.  Again, I said I don’t want to.  Then she got that look on her face that she gets when she’s onto something, and she pulled out the p-word and looked mildly pathetic for a few seconds.  I’m starting to feel bad, and I’m about to crack, and she knows it.  She knows it.  I’m reasoning with myself that I could’ve checked the oven five times in the time we’ve been arguing over me checking the oven, and right as I sort of begin promising, she stops me and holds out her pinky finger to me.

I sort of sputter and minutely shake my head, because, no, just no.  She steps even closer to me with her finger held out and says, “Pinky swear.”  And I begin glaring at her, because that is unfair, and she knows it.  I also vaguely remember thinking that I should just snap and bite her finger to show her what I really think about her manipulative pinky swearing ways, but I settle for the glaring.  She goes on and on about how sacred and unbreakable a pinky swear is, as if I don’t already know that.

You see, ever since I was a wee little thing, I’ve held a pinky swear as binding and above all forms of promises.  I always did it with my dad, and he always thought it was funny and cute, but it’s one of those things that’s stuck with me throughout the years.  Some people need to put their hand on a Bible or spill blood when they make a promise or a vow, but me?  For me, it’s wrapping my pinky around someone else’s.  That’s it for me.  The ultimate.  Not many people know that, but Jessica does.

And she pulled out the pinky swear over an oven.  I mean, I guess that says something about just how important this silly request is to her, but it’s hard to take that seriously when she’s grinning like the Cheshire Cat and looking all smug and in severe need of a ladle beating or maybe a spraying from the spray bottle we use on the cats when they’re bad.  But I did it.  I sighed when I realized her pinky was getting in dangerously close proximity to my nose and I held out my pinky and made the stupid promise.

Now I’m going to go turn the oven on so that in five minutes I can feel justified in checking it to make sure it’s off.

I decided to take a break from the saga of how Jessica and I met and became friends and eventually roommates tonight in order to do a free-for-all, because I am nothing if not lazy.

I have an unorganized folder of files that I’ve amassed over the years.  Everything in this folder pertains to reading and writing.  Most of the files and papers I have on reading contain quotes and comments on books I’ve read over the years.  You see, I am virtually incapable of merely reading a book and setting it aside.  I usually either highlight/write in the book or, more commonly, I copy passages down on paper–by hand!, the horrors!  This can get quite lengthy, and usually any given book will fill up several sheets of paper.  As you can imagine, this means that it takes me significantly longer than it normally would for me to get through a book.  The majority of the files and papers I have on writing are my own writing, and the remaining are things on writing.

As I was paging through my beloved folder (That’s an understatement; I would cry were I to lose it, and I don’t often or easily cry.), I ran across an in-class essay test I wrote in high school.  The Honors/AP English classes frequently had in-class essay tests that we received and had to write in the course of fifty minutes.  I hated those, and I still assert that they show nothing of one’s writing or reasoning ability other than the ability to perform under pressure while the person next to you beats on their keyboard like it’s a freaking bongo, but this particular one struck me, and not only because I did really, really well on it.  I don’t know if you ever go back and look at writing you did months or even years ago, but it’s always kind of shocking for me, because I tend to be very critical of my writing and think it’s complete rubbish at the time.  I nearly always look back at the writing and find myself thinking, “Wow.  I wrote this?  I don’t remember writing this, and it’s actually pretty good.”  This was one of those examples, and being that it is two and a half pages that I wrote in about forty-five minutes, well, I’m duly impressed.  The part that really impressed me, though, was the first half of my opening paragraph.  I thought I’d share it with you.

A glimmering sliver of silver slices through the air.  Moments later scarlet encrusts the edges.  The jaws of injustice clamp down unyieldingly as life seeps out slowly upon the floor.  A pool forms as the sanctity of life is violated.

Ok, not the world’s greatest writing, but I was a teenager and under a major time deadline.  I think it’s good.  Or maybe I’m just watering down my opinion because this is the internet and I’m expecting someone to storm in and tell me my writing is awful when I think it’s really good.  Hence the reason why I am emphasizing the points of TEENAGER! and IN-CLASS ESSAY.  I’m harsh on my own writing and fairly critical of most everyone else’s (not quite so much blogs and the internet, because this is all colloquial), and it’s not often I ever really look at something I write and think, “That’s really, really good.  Someone should’ve slapped me when I said otherwise,” but this is definitely one of those times.

However, so as to not stray entirely away from the topic of my roommate, I’ve decided to post two photographs of her.  She is aware I am posting these photographs, so I am not actually mean for doing so.  As it turns out, my roommate has a sense of humor, and she thinks they’re pretty funny.  She’d be more likely to comment on her looking fat than comment on the fact that she frightens small children.

I think the black and white factor really adds to the classiness of the photo.

Notice her tank top.  She moonlights as a supervillain. She’s Super Fly. (Note the double entendre.)

The red eyes in this one definitely capture her eBay auction moods.

She will stalk the auction page for up to an hour or two before it ends, and she will update you on it every five minutes whether you want her to or not.  And so help you and everyone else in a mile radius if she does not win.

To say I was shocked would perhaps be an understatement.  While Jessica and I had spoken a little bit online and even run into each other on campus once or twice, our one-on-one interactions were pretty rare.  However, the few points of reference that I did have for such an occasion included a greeting of some sort.  Then again, Jessica was aware of my assault and injuries, and so decided to skip the pleasantries and plunge straight into the interrogation with all of efficiency and bluntness of a wrecking ball.

The Little General’s impromptu grilling confused me, and instead of answering with a coherent, straightforward assertion, I answered more in the form of a question.

“Uhhh, to get food?”

I would have thought my answer an acceptable one, but for some reason, it seemed to further irritate and confuse her.  I know this, because her eyes narrowed, but her mouth opened marginally–seemingly in surprise–and she took that stance that people use when they’re about to tear someone else apart.  Usually such stances aren’t taken over someone trying to nourish him or herself, though.

“Alone?”

Now, there were several possible answers to this, the majority of which sarcastic, because it was a stupid frigging question in the first place since we both already knew the answer being that no one was with me.  I suppose that I could have been meeting someone, but being that I had said that I was going to get food and she asked if I was doing that particular activity alone, not whether I would be meeting someone, the answer was obvious.  Blatantly obvious.  However, being that she already looked ticked, I made a rather large personal sacrifice and opted for honesty over sarcasm.

“Yes.”

And then it came.  It’s not as if I wasn’t aware that I had recently been attacked at night.  The pain from my ribs every time I breathed was a constant reminder.  Would I have preferred to have someone accompany me?  Absolutely.  However, I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone, and it was my fault that I got wrapped up studying and missed dinner, so I didn’t exactly feel as if I had a leg to stand on and request someone drop what they do and escort me so that I could shovel food down my throat.  Though, at that moment, my appropriately named Red Dynamo was giving me hell and annoying the crap out of me, and I was suddenly rethinking my decision to be nice instead of sarcastic.  Then again, it was strangely endearing, albeit infuriating, or at least as endearing as an acquaintance who is butting into your personal business on the street can be.

The little spitfire seemed to huff for a second before she asserted, “Ok.  I’m coming with you.”  Knowing that if I declined her, it would be quite stupid given my current situation and her persistence, and that she could follow me anyway, I agreed and just mentally revised the past thirty seconds to pretend that she had said she’d like to come with me and would that be ok?  And I said, “Why, of course.”  Because if I didn’t, I’d dwell on her inviting herself and then that’d make me mildly annoyed and huffy for the five-minute walk there, and I didn’t want that because, despite pushing herself on me, she had good intentions.  On the way there, the wait for my food and the walk back, we talked more.  I told her more about the attack,  and she got all protective over me.  Why, I don’t know.  I couldn’t figure it out then, and I still can’t.  She just naturally came into that role where I was concerned.  She talked about Russian and the fact that she can’t speak it, and then she lectured me on going out at night by myself.  We were together for all of half an hour, but she seemed to fit an hour’s worth of lecturing in within that stretch of time.

We walked up the steps together to the landing connecting both of our buildings, and we said goodnight to one another and walked in separate directions into our respective brownstones.