Bringing Down the House

This week is move-in week!  Hurray!  Move-in week for college, you ask.  No, I answer, that was two weeks ago.  This is move-in week for the two new house mates of my six-person house.  Six-person house!, you screech.  Do you live in a frat house?  Are you in some kind of special Bio-dome like experiment against your will?  Are you just that poor?  Surely there is a good reason why you would subject yourself to such horrors!

Minus Pauly Shore and Stevie Baldwin, of course

Not really to the first one, I wish to the second, and kind of to the third.  You see, we are living in an unemployable world, and I am an unemployable girl, or a barely employable boy more accurately.  If I really wanted to I could stretch my budget and manage to live in a two-person, or even a single apartment.  But then again, I have become awfully accustomed to this whole eating thing.  Having five housemates definitely takes the chokehold off the wallet and I can actually enjoy myself as opposed to eating Raman Noodles for dinner every night—now Raman is only a Tuesday-Thursday meal!

The other factor is that I like living with other people.  I sincerely do.  When I interned in Chicago for a semester during college, I lived alone in the holiest of hole in the wall apartments.  That part I could get over that pretty easily.  The part that I couldn’t get over was how I woke up each morning, rode the El to my unfulfilling internship, rode the El home, made dinner while watching TV, went to sleep, and then did it all over again the next day without talking to anyone.  Definition of depressing.  I thought to myself back then that if this is the real world, I’m out.  Dunzo.  

Since then I’ve lived with roommates at every juncture, citing my financial situation as my sole excuse when met with skeptical looks.  But honestly, even if I could comfortably afford to live on my own, I wouldn’t, and here are my Top 10 Reasons Why;

      10.) Someone always owns a strainer, you know, for noodles and junk.

9.) The more roommates, the greater the friend base for parties, sports, all day caving expeditions. 

8.)   More movies, books, CD’s—pff, who owns CD’s anymore?  Your room mate is lame.                      

     7.)  If your roommate has a pet, you have a pet without any of the responsibilities, usually.

     6.)  Hilarious sitcom re-enactments; Perfect Strangers, Three’s Company, The Brady Bunch if    you have enough roommates (you may have to use the pets for this one).

     5.)  You don’t have to own/ buy as much stuff.

     4.)  Someone always owns a pair of nail clippers.

     3.) There is someone to come home to.

     2.)  When burglars break in you don’t have to go all Home Alone on them, by yourself.

     1.)  Just think of the greatest times in your life: college, road trips, summer camp.  Now how many people were you living with then? 

I will preface all of this with in order to get the full effect, you really need to be friends with your roommates.  Living with roommates = fun.  Living with tenants = bad freshman roommate experience all over again.  That’s really the only drawback of this lifestyle; as more of my friends continue to subscribe to uni or bi-person residencies, good roommates become harder and harder to find.  I can see the writing on the wall, but the show must go on, right? 

I'm aware that at 26 I should either be living with a girlfriend/ wife/ family, or financially stable enough to live on my own in a place that would attract those things, but none of that really appeals to me right now.  That could change, but in the mean time, why mess with success?  I can only hope that by the time I hit 30, there isn’t as much of a stigma on that as there is now, although the likes of Bert and Ernie really aren't helping my case here.  Maybe think more along the lines of Chandler and Joey--wait, is there a difference?

They're just good friends, right?

Also, how'd I manage to post 2, count 'em, 2 pictures of Chandler and Joey in my blog?

So with an ever so sympathetic frown on your face, you might ask, Doesn’t this mean that you’re just afraid to grow up?  Nope, I resoundingly answer, humans are naturally a social species and I’m just being true to my roots.  So don’t cry for me Argentina, because sometimes I laugh at you behind your back.