This is from my college days at UMBC.

My roommate, H. was the only person in a four-person apartment that didn't share or contribute anything. Gabe had dishes and a supply of food (which he shared), Steve had the entertainment system and his own food (which he shared), and I had the Internet service for everyone (except H., who decided to get his own) and my supply of food (which I shared).

He had no problem using all the utensils, and even blatantly lent out Gabe's stuff on a few occasions to the neighbors (who Gabe didn't know). But then when we confronted him about it, he complained about someone drinking his skim milk from the fridge without asking. H. was the only one who doesn't share food and then expects everyone around him to cater to his preferences? I don't think so. If he didn't want his food consumed by accident, he should have labeled it. On the other hand, the dishes and other things were unquestionably Gabe's and everybody in the apartment knew that.

H. was amazingly defensive about any hint that he might be inferior to anyone else. I worked as a Traffic Reporter from the house, and when I told him that his cordless phone was bleeding into all my Maryland State Police transmissions during my work hours, he demanded to know why I was listening to his phone. I told him I was trying to listen to the police channels, and that cheaper phones aren't protected in any way from scanner listening, and often bleed into other channels.

His reply was simply, "What are you trying to say, that my phone is cheap?"

I told him, he bought an inexpensive phone, he had to learn to deal with it. His conversations still leaked in because his phone has some pretty severe spurious emissions. He wasn't too happy about that, but there's not much you can do on a Part 15 telephone, and I certainly wasn't going to stop working during the times he wanted to chat with his girlfriend (who all lived on campus).

The greatest story was the day one of his girlfriends was coming over. Suddenly H. wants the place spotless and it becomes all our faults that it looks to messy for her.

He goes into the bathroom for a few minutes, flushes, and suddenly the toilet overflows.

Oh no! This girl will be here in less than an hour and now H.'s crap is all over the floor. Literally.

Well, he comes out into the common room where Steve and I are sitting, and asks which one of us jammed up the toliet last. We're like, obviously it was you because you took a crap and suddenly it's overflowing. Since this is the first opportunity we've ever had to see him actually clean something, we don't want to get up and help him. He's furious, and keeps insinuating the entire time that Steve and I clogged up the drain with too much toilet paper and that we should be the ones cleaning it!

We just laughed and watched him get on his hands and knees to clean for the first time ever.

Another time was when I had two of my friends, visitors from New Jersey. They're going to sleep in the common room, and everyone was agreed with it since I asked almost two weeks in advance that they could stay over.

H. comes into my room that night, in front of both of them, and says, um, this is my apartment so at 8am I'm going to go into the common room where they're sleeping, turn on the TV and watch Pokemon. I was flabbergasted! My friends were absolutely furious besides, because we were going to rest up and then go to Baltimore the next day, but it was a late night so we were going to all sleep until about ten to be comfortable.

Fortunately he didn't actually follow through, which was good because I took my television splitter from out of the main line and put it in my lock box for the night. He would have bothered them to get nothing but static that morning.

Towards the end of our time together, H. turns up his loud rap music all the way when going into the shower so that he can hear it from his room, without asking if that's okay. It's so loud music can go through my walls and into the other rooms. Since I'm a techno fan myself, I don't complain about the bass beats, per se, but at least I close my door when I put on something heavy.

Trying to have a discussion with H. about apartment issues and his habits is like having an argument with a loud, obnoxious sailor. Every other word out of his mouth is the word "fuck," or some permutation thereof.

H. once had a loud conversation with his girlfriend on the telephone which I overheard in the hallway, justifying his regular marijuana consumption. We never smelled anything, so we could never prove it.

H. ordered food in quite frequently and creates a lot of trash, but when trash piles up it's always another one of us that should be taking it out.

I've been told that quite a number of people in the past have tried to avoid the necessity of having to room with H. both his Freshman and Sophomore year. Unfortunately we weren't so lucky to be able to avoid him. Maybe some future roommate or potential romance of H.'s will read this one day, and be spared the misfortune of having to deal with him as a roommate.

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