Last night, as I made my way across the living room in the dark, I happened to slip and fall on a stack of papers and photographs that has been sitting in an untidy little pile next to our couch while I decide what exactly to do with it. The thud and crackling and rustling and such was enough to probably convince Tyler both that I had broken something important and that my bones are apparently as fragile as little bird bones that snap if the breeze blows wrong. Though the noise was...substantial (our neighbors beneath us may think that people are routinely murdered in our apartment considering how often they hear a body fall. The body is mine, by the way), I did not actually hurt myself in any way, but it reminded me of a story. And really, I like any excuse to tell a good college story because I miss college.
This particular story dates back to my sophomore year. I was, at that time, living with a dear, fiesty, and horrifyingly intelligent bio-chemistry major friend. Some may know her as Kirsten, or perhaps "The Khoe". While not psychotically neat, she was the kind of person who tended to actually have a place that each of her things belonged and who liked to be able to see her floor. There were many days when her bed was made, her books and papers were stacked in neat little piles, and her clothes were generally in her dresser or wardrobe. Her side of the room was a place where the odd visitor need not be afraid of being lost or injured by anything.
My side of the room was slightly different. I am sure at one point I had places for most of my things, but since they were seldom where they belonged I quickly forgot where everything went. The ledge next to my bed, my desk, my dresser, the chair next to my bed...all were completely covered in things that generally had no business being anywhere at all. I don't believe the chair next to my bed was actually ever sat in as it was so full of my jackets, books, notebooks, and other stuff. I would occasionally go on very brief cleaning sprees and would discover on my side of the room things I didn't know existed, much less that I owned. Even our walls reflected our different ideas about acceptable mess. Kirsten's walls, while full, had posters and pictures hung next to each other at perfectly right angles. It was all pretty orderly. My walls had sketches, photos, pictures from magazines, collages, masks, christmas ornaments, cards, seashells, and whatever else I could find hung at odd angles, purposely crooked and pushed into little clusters everywhere. I even had roses hanging upside down from the ceiling for a while.
Kirsten was ridiculously understanding of my mess. I'm still not sure how she managed to put up with it. The only thing she insisted on was that my stuff stay on my side of the room. This would become an issue because of my charming habit of dumping things on the floor around my desk and bed. Clothes formed mounds on the floor and stacks of notes, books, and loose papers were everywhere. I can't be completely sure of this, but I think Kirsten might have pushed the wall of my junk back to my side of the room with a yardstick a few times. I would sometimes come back and find a line clearly dividing the room: floor covered in crap on one side, floor clear but for the rug on the other.
Anyway, this bit of background is important for my little memory. One night, I came back to the room late. I tended to do this often as I had several vaguely nocturnal friends and my earliest classes were at nine thirty or ten. That's just how Peace Studies rolls. Kirsten, being science-y, had eight o'clock classes. And they were tough classes. The kind a person should be awake for. So she would be a good, responsible person and go to bed at a decent hour and I would come sneaking back to the room around one or two in the morning.
She had turned out the lights in the room (not a big deal. There was a street light that shined right into our room, though it was slightly blocked by the tree that grew in front of the window). I planned to be the best roommate ever. I would creep over to my side and go to sleep and not make her lose a second of sleep before her big important classes (I hear they deal with chemicals and numbers and stuff).
I slowly and silently shut the door. I turned and stealthily moved forward in the close-to-darkness. I distinctly remember feeling a bit like a ninja as I moved undetected through the blackened room toward the unmade lump of my bed. "I could be a spy," I thought to myself. "The best spy ever. I would go on missions and routinely save the world in secret. Everyone would owe me and not even know it." I took my first step into the swirling eddies of junk on the floor around my bed...and lost the ninja in me immediately. I stepped on a plastic grocery bag, which not only crinkled loud enough to wake the dead, but caused me to slip forward. I fell onto my bed, hitting the wall with my head. The creaks, thuds, mild swearing and unholy crinkling Kirsten might have ignored if she hadn't heard me distinctly mutter to myself, "This is why I can't be a ninja." I'm not sure I have ever heard her laugh that long. She very much enjoyed telling that story to everyone we saw for the next several weeks and, as far as I know, still tells it.
Nothing like messiness, clumsiness, and late-night mayhem to solidify a friendship.
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