The more the merrier

This one time my roommate’s wife moved in with us.

I talk when I need to talk or when I feel like talking. So if I don’t want to talk to my roommate, or need to talk to my roommate, I generally don’t. Sometimes roommates are friends and sometimes they’re just people who cohabitate, and I have no problem with that.

When my roommate got engaged he didn’t tell me. I don’t think he was trying to keep it a secret or anything, we just talked when we needed to talk, and he didn’t deem this a necessary thing to convey. I knew he was engaged because I facebook compulsively and such things cause a lot of commotion on the fb. But when it happened he didn’t actually tell me.

He did tell me eventually, several months later, about a week before his actual wedding. He told me to let me know that his family would be staying in our apartment for the wedding. I didn’t really find this acceptable but rather than cause a fuss I went with it. And if he wanted his parents and grandparents staying in our partially sketchy bachelor apartment, it was really much worse for them than it was for me. Unfortunately this was a portend of things to come.

Now I wondered what he was going to do with his contract for the apartment, but when he finally got around to telling me about the wedding, a week before it, I thought it would be rude to immediately ask for his next 2 months of rent or see if he’d sold the contract or what. But when he and his wife returned from their honeymoon and moved into his room I saw what his plan was. His plan was staying in our apartment.

Now in fairness, that wasn’t his Plan A. Plan A had been buying a house. But this didn’t happen for some reason or another (I don’t know why, that would have required talking) so Plan B was moving his new wife into his partially sketchy bachelor pad.

I imagine a typical Mormon guy wouldn’t have accepted a couple newlyweds living in his smaller-than-average apartment. But again, it had to be much worse for them than for me. And who was I to kick them out, when his name was on the contract as well as my own.

Prior to his wife moving in, my roommate didn’t listen to music. After his wife moved in, there was often music playing at a substantial volume in the room three feet away from my own. Prior to his wife moving in he would very rarely watch movies. Now it was not uncommon for them to “watch” the complete LOTR trilogy in a row, or even to watch the same movie on repeat. I can’t say that I ever heard, or saw thankfully, any newlywed activities, but I can most definitely make some pretty accurate guesses about when and where these occurred.

Eventually our contract was up and I didn’t talk to him about resigning. I just started inviting people to come and see if they wanted the room. Thankfully this tract worked and they moved out, presumably to a house of some kind. Or maybe to some other guy’s apartment.