Tag: roommate

April 12-13, 1997. Alaina’s coffee house party, and a plan for next year. (#127)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 7 Comments

I looked up Box Elder Court on a map before I left the apartment.  It was a few miles away, in east Jeromeville, just past Power Line Road.  I was told that the party started at seven o’clock, but I did not leave the apartment until 7:17, and it was almost 7:30 by the time I turned onto Box Elder Court.  I did not feel comfortable being the first to arrive at a party where I knew few people.

But I wanted to go.  I saw Alaina and Whitney on campus a few days ago between classes, and Alaina had reminded me, “Greg, you’re coming to the coffee house party, right?”  Besides, I liked this new group of friends.

In hindsight, I sometimes humorously referred to early 1997 as my Rebellious Period.  Right around the same time I got frustrated with the cliques at Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, I had made some friends who went to another college-age Christian group, University Life.  I went to University Life a few times, although I did not stop attending Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, or my church.  I had not been around U-Life enough to notice if cliques were a problem, but I did seem to notice that they were not obsessed with putting people in categories like JCF was.  Everyone at JCF wanted to lead Bible studies for future student leaders, or for transfer students, or for students of a certain ethnic or cultural background, or for women, but there were no specific groups for any category I fit into.  I had heard that there would only be one small group at JCF next year that was not category specific.  I wondered if there were others like me who did not fit into the categories; if so that would be a very large small group.  More like a medium group.

Box Elder Court was a cul-de-sac, long enough for eight houses on either side.  (Every time I use the word “cul-de-sac,” I have to mention that the term literally means “bag’s ass” in French.)  Both sides of the street were mostly lined with cars already, so I had to park at the opposite end of the street from the house where the party was.  Either this party was going to be crowded, or many people with cars lived on Box Elder Court, or both.

I walked along the east side of the street, now in shadow.  The sun had dropped below the houses on the opposite side and was just setting.  Twilight was descending over the neighborhood.  I approached my destination, a pale blue house with a garage protruding from the front right side, the number 1402 on the wall next to the garage door.  As I walked to the left of the garage toward the front door, I could hear muffled noises suggesting a large crowd inside.  A sign on the door, on a sheet of poster board of the kind typically used for school projects, said “BOX ELDER HOUSE OF JAVA – OPEN!  COME ON IN!” Next to these words was a drawing of a mug of coffee.

I opened the door slowly and peeked my head in, then I quietly walked forward in the direction that most of the noise seemed to come from.  The house had a small living room on the left, with couches and a television; two people I did not know sat on the couch talking.  Straight ahead was a dining room area, opening to a kitchen on the left.  A hallway to the right of the dining room led to what appeared to be a bathroom and at least one bedroom, and to the right, a stairway descended from what were probably more bedrooms upstairs.  This house looked big for three girls; I did not know how many lived here in total.

Someone had pushed the dining room table aside and set up a bar stool with a microphone on a stand in a corner of the dining room.  A sign near the stool said OPEN MIC NIGHT, keeping true to the coffee shop theme.  About ten or twelve people were milling about the kitchen and dining room; a few faces looked familiar, but the only people I recognized for sure were the three girls I knew who lived here: Alaina, Whitney, and Corinne.

Whitney spotted me first.  “Greg!” she said.  “You made it!”

“Yeah,” I replied, looking toward the kitchen.  Alaina stood over an espresso machine making some kind of drink; next to the espresso machine was a conventional coffee machine.

“Hey, Greg!” Alaina said, sounding excited to see me.  “Can I get you a drink?”  Alaina gestured toward a white board, on which had been written a menu of coffee drinks.

“I’m probably not going to have coffee, but thanks,” I said.

“There are other drinks in the refrigerator if you want.  Help yourself.”

“Sounds good.”  I opened the refrigerator and took a can of Dr Pepper.  I noticed a few drawings and paintings adorning the walls around the dining room; I was no trained judge of art, but they appeared to be intentionally silly.  “I love the coffee shop decorations,” I said.  “Right down to the art on the walls.”

“Yeah,” Alaina replied, pointing to a piece of paper that had been profusely scribbled on with crayons.  “That one is mine.”

I looked more closely; a sign next to the drawing had indicated that its title was Studying for Finals, and that Alaina was the artist.  “Studying for Finals,” I said.  “That’s fitting.”  Next to Studying for Finals was a drawing in black charcoal of some kind of monster with large eyes, abstract amorphous spots vaguely suggesting a nose and mouth, and no limbs.  This drawing had been attributed to Corinne, and its title was Alaina.

“Corinne drew you as a monster?” I asked Alaina.

“Huh?” Corinne said, overhearing me call her name.

“Your drawing,” I said.

“Oh, yeah.  You know how it is, how sometimes your roommate can act like a monster.”

I chuckled at this, then noticed a sign that said PAINTINGS $5 – ALL PROCEEDS GO TO JEN’S MISSION TRIP TO BRAZIL.  “These paintings are for sale?” I asked.

“Yeah!” Corinne said.  “We thought this would be a fun way to help Jen raise a little money.”

“I don’t know if I know Jen,” I replied.  Jen was usually short for Jennifer, the most common name for college-aged girls in the United States in 1997, so there were probably multiple girls named Jen who the girls in this house knew.

“She’s coming later,” Corinne explained.  “She had something else to do today.”

“Oh, okay.  I still think this is a great idea, though.  Can I buy this one?” I asked, gesturing toward Corinne’s Alaina.

“You want to buy my painting?  Yeah!”

“Should I give you the money?”

“Just put it in the tip jar over by Alaina.  We’ll give you the painting after the party.”

“Sounds good,” I said.  I walked to the tip jar and put five dollars in it.

“What’s that for?” Alaina asked.

“I’m buying Corinne’s art.”

“Really?  Are you sure you don’t want to buy mine?”

“See?” Corinne told Alaina.  “Greg thinks you were acting like a monster the other day too!”

“I don’t want to get involved in any drama!” I said.  “I just thought it was funny.”

“We’re just messing around,” Corinne said reassuringly.  “Do you and your roommates ever argue?”

“Not really that much,” I said.  “Our apartment has been pretty peaceful.  And I lived alone before that; this is my first time having roommates.”

“Lucky.”

“And I don’t know where I’m going to live next year.  People always seem to make their housing arrangements without asking me.”

“What about your current roommates?”

“They’re older.  I don’t think they’ll be in Jeromeville next year.”

“That’s too bad,” Corinne said.  “But, hey, if I hear of any guys from U-Life who need a roommate, I’ll let you know.”

“Cool.  Thanks!”

“No problem!  I’ll be right back.  Corinne left toward the bedrooms, then returned with a sticky note that said SOLD and placed it on the Alaina drawing.

I found a chair and sat and watched people for a while.  Ben Lawton had arrived while I was talking to Corinne, and Carolyn Parry was just walking in now, carrying a guitar case.  Corinne took Carolyn’s guitar back to the bedrooms, presumably to keep it out of the way of everyone.  That made a total of five people I knew by name at this party.  Carolyn looked in my direction, and I waved.

“Hey, Greg,” Carolyn said.  “Good to see you here!  What’s up?”

“Just the usual,” I said.  “Are you singing later?  Is that why you brought the guitar?”

“Yeah!  I’ll be singing a song I wrote.”

“That’s so cool!”

“How do you like the pieces for chorus this quarter?”

“I’m learning them okay.  I like them so far.  I don’t know German at all, though, so that’ll take some practice to pronounce right.”

“Yeah.  You’ll pick it up fine with practice.”

“Thanks.”

Around eight o’clock, Alaina got everyone’s attention and announced, “Make sure you sign up for the open mic!  We’ll start at 8:30.”  She put a clipboard on the dining room table, and when she saw that I was watching her, she said, “You’re gonna do something on the open mic, right, Greg?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Yes!  Sign up!  Just, like, get up there and do a math problem or something, and say it’s a poem about math.  That would be hilarious!”

“You know,” I said, “I think I’ll do something like that.”  I signed my name on the clipboard.

I did more people-watching and mingling until eight-thirty, at which time everyone gathered in the dining room around the microphone.  Carolyn went first, with the guitar she had retrieved from the bedroom.  “This is a song I wrote,” she said.  “It’s about God’s love for us.”  She then proceeded to play a fast rhythm on the guitar, singing from the perspective of God, calling someone who has been running away back into the love and hope that he offers.  I knew how it felt to want to hide from God, and his love and truth.  Carolyn was quite good as a singer, and these lyrics showed her to be just as good as a songwriter.

Next, a guy I did not know walked up to the microphone and began reciting a poem.  “Once, there was this kid, who got into an accident, and couldn’t come to school,” he said.  This was a dark poem, I thought.  “When he finally came back, his hair had turned from black into bright white.  He said that it was from when the cars had smashed so hard.”  As he continued reciting words, next about a girl with an embarrassing birthmark, I realized why this poem had sounded familiar.  He was reading the lyrics to a strange song that was popular a few years earlier, “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by the Crash Test Dummies.  Despite being so dark, I always thought the song was oddly catchy.

A few more performers came up, performing various types of music and poetry readings.  Some were serious, others were silly, and others involved inside jokes among the U-Life crowd that went over my head.  After about seven or eight performers had gone, Alaina called out, “Next up, Greg!”

Hey, that’s me, I thought.  After signing up, I had prepared something according to Alaina’s advice.  “This is a dramatic reading of the Pythagorean Theorem,” I said.  A few in the crowd giggled, and when the giggles stopped, I began.  “In a right triangle!” I shouted dramatically.  “The square!  Of the… hy-pot-en-use!” I continued, taking frequent breaths and carefully enunciating each syllable of “hypotenuse.”  “Is equal!  To the sum… of the squares!  Of… the other.  Two… Siiiiidessss.”  I drew out that last word, pronouncing it slowly.  I walked away from the microphone, and everyone applauded.

“Good job!” Corinne told me as I returned to the crowd.  “That was perfect.”

“Thanks!” I smiled.

I stayed at the coffee shop party for another couple hours, until it wound down and the girls who lived there had begun cleaning up.  I took Corinne’s Alaina drawing off the wall when I left and hung it up in my room at the apartment, right next to Tear Down the Wall, the painting I had made freshman year with Bok and Skeeter and some others from my dorm.


The next day was Sunday, and by mid-afternoon I was still in a good mood after having had so much fun at the party the night before.  It was a beautiful day, sunny and a little on the warm side, but not hot.  Josh, the roommate I did not know as well as the other two, was actually home for once, and he seemed to be the only one home.  “Hey, Greg,” Josh said as I came downstairs to the kitchen for a snack.  “What’s up?”

“Nothing.  I’m just relaxing the rest of the day.  I don’t have any homework or studying.”

“You wanna come play disc golf?  I was just thinking, this is a perfect day for it.”

“Sure!” I said.  I grabbed the flying disc that I had gotten from Brian on the day of last year’s Man of Steel competition and got into Josh’s car.  Josh had an entire bag of discs of different shapes and sizes; he was obviously a more experienced player than I was.

We drove about a mile and a quarter south on Maple Drive and parked next to a city park near a cluster of apartments just north of campus.  I followed Josh to a concrete slab marked with a number 1.  “There’s the hole over there,” Josh said, pointing at a pole with chains around it, making a cage-like structure, and a tray below.

“So this is an actual disc golf course?  And the goal is to get the disc in the tray there?”

“Yeah.  You’ve never done disc golf here?”

“I haven’t.  The only time I’ve played disc golf was last year at the Man of Steel competition, and they just made up a course where the holes were trees or poles you had to hit.”

“Aim for those chains,” Josh said.  “Your disc hits the chains, they’ll slow it down, and it’ll land in that tray.”

“Cool,” I said.  Josh got his disc in the hole in two throws, using a different disc for the second, shorter throw than he used for the first throw.  My first throw went wildly off course, and it took me a total of five throws to make it in the hole.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Josh said as we walked to the next tee area.

Uh-oh, I thought.  This was a classic move; Josh got me alone, just him and me, because he wanted to talk to me about something serious.  Maybe I was being a bad roommate, and he wanted to call me out.  Maybe I was acting inappropriately in front of the youth group at church.  Fortunately, it was not a bad thing at all that Josh wanted to ask.

“Do you have a place to live next year?” Josh asked.

“No, I don’t.  Why?  Do you need a roommate?”

“I do, actually.  You know Sean Richards, right?”

I attended Catholic Mass until about six months ago, when I got involved at Jeromeville Covenant Church instead.  Sean was one of the few other Catholic students who also attended Jeromeville Christian Fellowship.  “Yeah,” I said.  “I know Sean.”

“What about Sam Hoffman?  Light blond hair, physics major like me, he goes to JCF sometimes?”

“I think I know who you’re talking about.”

“Anyway, Sean knows four guys who live in a three-bedroom house, and their landlord approved Sean to take over their lease.  So, Sean and Sam and I are going to live there, but we need a fourth.  You would be sharing the large bedroom with Sean.  But you two would have your own bathroom.  Are you interested?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “That sounds great!”  Sharing a bedroom was not ideal, but I had been doing it all this year, so it would not be that difficult of a transition.  It was somewhat amusing that I would go from sharing a bedroom with someone named “Shawn” to sharing a bedroom with someone named “Sean.”  “Where is the house?” I asked.

“It’s on Acacia Drive.  Across the street from the Acacia Apartments.”

“That’s a great location!” I said.  Three different groups of people from my freshman dorm lived in the Acacia Apartments sophomore year, and I used to visit them there occasionally.  I knew the area.  “I could walk to church from there,” I added.

“Yeah!  We’re gonna take a look at the house sometime next week.  I’ll let you know for sure when we do.  But we’re all pretty sure we’re gonna go for it.”

“Sounds good!  This certainly takes a lot of stress off of me.”

“I think we’ll be a fun group of guys.  And it’ll be nice having an actual house.”

“Yeah!” I said.

Josh continued to dominate our game of disc golf.  He tried to teach me to throw more straight; his pointers helped a little, but I obviously needed more practice to throw a disc straight.  The Man of Steel competition, among the men of JCF, was coming up in less than two months, and I would need to throw much straighter than that if I wanted to avoid repeating my near-last-place finish.  I found myself getting a little frustrated, but we were not strictly keeping score.  This time was more about hanging out with Josh.  He told me that he would be doing the teacher training program next year, to be a high school science teacher.  I told him about my internship helping in a math class at Jeromeville High, and about the summer internships I had applied for, so I would be able to decide between teaching and graduate school.  Josh also asked if I had heard that Shawn, our roommate who was currently doing teacher training for math, had become disillusioned with it and was considering leaving teaching.  I told Josh that I had heard this, and that it was unfortunate.

I answered emails from a few Internet friends when I got home, and I had told each of those people that I had a great weekend.  I went to a fun party with new friends, and my housing plans for the following year had fallen into place nicely.  And no one seemed to care that I was part of Jeromeville Christian Fellowship but hanging out with University Life people.  It was okay to have multiple groups of friends.  It was a good thing.

Corinne Holt
Alaina, 1997
Charcoal on paper

Courtesy of the G. J. Dennison personal collection.

Readers: Have you ever performed at an open mic night? Tell me about it in the comments!

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September 9, 1996. My first great prank. (#100)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 18 Comments

Author’s note: This is the 100th episode!! Thank you to all of you for following along with this story. It means a lot that you find enjoyment in my storytelling.

Toilet-papering houses has long been a traditional prank among teenagers and young adults.  High school and college students would decorate houses, yards, and trees with toilet paper as a way to play a good-natured joke on someone.

At least that was what I had always heard.  I was never one of the cool kids, so my house never got toilet-papered when I was in high school.  I lived far from most of my friends, and none of them knew where I lived, and even if they did, I did not have the kind of social connections that led me to be involved in any of these pranks, either as an instigator or a recipient.

This year, though, I felt like I was living with the cool kids, or at least closer to the experience than I ever had before.  Many of the students in Jeromeville Christian Fellowship lived with each other in large houses and apartments, and many of those students’ social lives revolved around JCF.  I had begun attending JCF about a month into the school year last fall, and over the course of the year I had gotten to know many of the other students in the group over the course of the year.  One of the cool kid houses split up because most of the residents graduated, but two residents of that house who were still in Jeromeville, and they were now my roommates for this year.  Shawn Yang was still a student at the University of Jeromeville, in the teacher training program, and Brian Burr was working part-time for JCF, supported by contributions, and taking the year to apply to medical school.

Shawn and I moved in the first weekend of September, and Brian moved in a few days later.  Our fourth roommate, Josh McGraw, had not moved in yet.  On the first Monday after Brian moved in, I had a chicken pot pie from the freezer in the oven for dinner.  When I came downstairs to eat, Brian was in the living room.  He had been busy that morning, so this was the first I had seen him that day.  He wore a shirt with the logo of the Bay City Captains football team; the shirt said, “One for the thumb!” next to a drawing of a hand wearing the Captains’ five football championship rings, one on each finger.  The Captains had won their fifth championship recently, in the 1994-95 season.

“Nice shirt,” I said.

“Hey, how was the game yesterday?  Looks like you saw a blowout.”

“I know.  34 to nothing.”

“Where were you guys sitting?”

“Section 27.  We were pretty far up, though.”

“Nice.  Do you guys go to Captains games often?”

“This was my first one in person.  The doctor that my mom works for has season tickets, and no one was using them this week, so he asked if we wanted them.”

“Nice!  It’s been a few years since I’ve been to one.”

“It was so much fun!  Traffic was really bad on the way home, though.  It took longer to drive across Bay City from the stadium to the bridge than it did to get from the bridge to Jeromeville.”

“Wow.  That’s crazy.”

“I know,” I said.  The distance from the bridge to home was about ten times as far as the distance across the city.  It took almost three hours to make a trip that would have taken an hour and a half with no traffic.

Shawn walked in the front door a few minutes later, covered in sweat and wearing nothing but running shorts and shoes.  “Hey, guys,” he said.

“What are you doing tonight?” Brian asked.  “I wanna pull a prank.  It’s been a long time.  Let’s toilet-paper someone’s house.”  I could not tell from Brian’s tone whether or not I was going to be included in any potential toilet-papering, and I did not want to impose.  Instead, I sat at the table eating my pot pie, listening eagerly and hoping I would be explicitly invited, or at least that I could find a way to ask that did not come across as awkward.

“Hmm.  Who do we know who’s around, but not home right now?” Shawn asked.

“I need to get Lorraine back for last year.  But I know she’s gonna be home tonight.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw Mike Kozlovsky earlier.  He’s in town today.  He said they’re gonna watch a movie over there tonight, and a few other people will be there too.  That won’t work unless we find a way to get them out of the house.  Or… unless…”

“Unless what?” Shawn asked.

“We could TP their house while they’re watching the movie.  The sound will be turned up, so if we’re quiet enough, they won’t hear us!”

“You know what would be really fun?  If we hid somewhere after we finished, and then, when everyone was leaving after the movie, we’d hear their reaction.”

“That would be amazing,” Brian said.  “They’d probably catch us, though.  And they’d recognize my car parked outside.”

Unbeknownst to me, I possessed a hidden power that would be very useful to Brian and Shawn in their prank.  Shawn realized it first.  “Let’s take Greg’s car,” he said.  “None of them know Greg’s car.”

“Yes!” Brian exclaimed.  “And Greg’s car has plenty of room, so we can hide in the back of Greg’s car and wait for them to come outside!”

“Sounds good,” I said.  Sounds like I was invited after all.  “When do we leave?”


A few hours later, after it was dark, the three of us piled into my Ford Bronco with an unopened 12-pack of toilet paper in the back.  As I pulled out of my parking space, Shawn said, “Hey!  Remember how Mike Kozlovsky is scared of snakes?”

“Oh, yeah!” Brian said, laughing.  “That was hilarious that one time.

“I saw a dead snake in the middle of the road when I was out running earlier.  If it’s still there, we should go get it and leave it on their porch.”

“Dude.  That’s kind of messed up.  But we totally should.”

“Where am I going?” I asked.

“Turn left,” Shawn instructed me.  I turned left on Maple Drive and followed it north, to where it makes a curve to the left at the edge of the Jeromeville city limits, becoming a frontage road to Highway 117.  “Turn on the high beams,” Shawn said.  “The snake was right up here somewhere.”

I slowed down to about fifteen miles per hour, hoping that no one would come up behind us, looking at the road below me.  After about a minute, I saw it, just as Shawn described: a snake, about two feet long, lying dead in the road, its body making the shape of the letter S.  “Is that it?” I asked.

“Yes!” Shawn exclaimed.  “I’ll get out and get it.”  Shawn got out of the car, picked up the snake using a napkin he found in my glove compartment, then returned to the passenger seat holding the snake.

“Where am I going?” I asked.  “Lorraine’s house, right?  I don’t know where that is.”

“Corner of K Street and Columbine Court,” Brian answered.  “So take Coventry to K.”

I made a U-turn and headed back down Maple Drive, past our apartment, and turned left on Coventry Boulevard, past two shopping centers, the high school, and the C.J. Davis Art Center.  The street crossed over a railroad track, and at the bottom of the overpass I turned right on K Street.  I certainly had to admit that this was a new experience for me.  As much as I was looking forward to having fun with roommates this year, I never expected that, just a week after moving in, I would be driving across town in the dark with a bunch of toilet paper and a dead snake.  This would definitely be a night that I would remember for a long time.

That stretch of K Street between Coventry Boulevard and Ninth Street had a long row of apartment complexes on the right, wedged between the street and the railroad track, with detached houses on the left.  Lorraine’s house was on the left, the east side of the street; I did not know her well, but I knew who she was.  Her loud boisterous personality made her hard to miss at JCF events.  Mike Kozlovsky, one of Brian and Shawn’s other roommates the previous year, had graduated and moved back home, but he had a younger girlfriend, Jeanette, who was still in school.  Jeanette was one of Lorraine’s roommates in this house.

I parked across the street from the house.  “I’m gonna go make sure the coast is clear,” Brian said.  He tiptoed across the street into the yard, staying low and close to the bushes planted below the living room window.  The front drapes were closed, and a dim light glowed through the other side of the living room window, presumably by the television on which the people in the house were watching the movie.  Brian tilted his head to listen to what was happening in the living room.  After about a minute, he looked directly at Shawn and me, still in the car, and motioned for us to approach.  I grabbed the toilet paper and tiptoed quickly across the dark street, with Shawn following me carrying the dead snake.

I quietly opened the package of toilet paper, and each of us took a roll.  Shawn put the dead snake on the porch, far enough from the door to be visible to whomever opened it, and unrolled his toilet paper across the bushes.  Brian and I each took our rolls and threw them into the large maple tree in the yard.  I watched in awe as the unrolling toilet paper left behind a long stream stuck in the branches.  I picked up the roll and tossed it again, watching as the tree became covered in toilet paper.  I continued throwing two more rolls into the tree when I noticed that Brian was no longer next to me.

Brian had walked back out to K Street, where he was now covering a black Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck with toilet paper.  “Mike’s car,” Brian explained in a whisper as I approached.  I unrolled more toilet paper to decorate the outside of the truck, then I went back to covering  bushes near the front door.  Shawn was adding to the toilet paper already in the tree.  When I noticed there was no more toilet paper in the package, I stepped back to the sidewalk to admire our work.  A few minutes later, when Brian and Shawn were finished, we grabbed the empty bag and the cardboard cores of the toilet paper roll and quietly walked back to my car.

“Shawn,” Brian said.  “Hop back here with me.  Greg, can you stay out of sight up front?”

“Sure,” I replied as Shawn and Brian climbed over the back seat into the cargo area.

“Roll down the windows, so we can hear them.”

“Okay.”  I lowered the windows, then reclined the driver’s seat all the way back so that as little of me would be visible from the outside as possible.  The glow of the television was still showing from behind the living room drapes, and the occupants of the house did not appear to react or notice our handiwork.

“Now we wait?” I whispered.

“Now we wait,” Brian replied.

The minutes dragged on in silence as I lay on the reclined driver’s seat, my head poking up just enough to keep an eye on the house.  Nothing had changed.  I had no idea how long it would be until the movie was over and people left.  After a few minutes of silence, Brian began making small talk.

“Greg?” Brian asked.  “Are you going to Outreach Camp?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“It’s your first one, right?”

“Right.”

“You’ll love it.  I always had a great time at Outreach Camp.”

“I wish I could go this year,” Shawn said.  “But I’ll be teaching.”

“That must be kind of hard juggling everything,” Brian said.  “The school where you’re teaching and Jeromeville being on different schedules.”

“Yeah, but it’s only for one year.”

After a few more minutes of silence, Shawn spoke up with more small talk.  “Greg?  What classes are you taking this quarter?”

“Math 127A and 128A, Religious Studies 40, and chorus,” I said.

“I liked 127A.  127B and C not so much, but 127A was pretty easy.  It’s just the theory behind everything you did in calculus.  And I never took the 128 series.”

“I loved RST 40,” Brian added.

“It’ll be the last class I need for my general ed requirements,” I explained.  “And I’ve heard a lot of people from JCF say good things about it.”

“Did you say chorus?” Shawn asked.  “I didn’t know you sang.”

“I’ve never done it before.  I have to audition, and I’m a little nervous about that.  I haven’t had any formal vocal training, but I’ve been singing in the choir at my church for almost a year.”

“That’s the same chorus that Scott and Amelia are in, right?” Brian asked.

“I think so,” I said.

“I’ve heard the audition isn’t hard.  They just want to make sure you can carry a tune.”

“I hope it’s that easy–”

“Shhh!” Shawn interrupted.  “Movie’s over!”

I looked across the street to the house.  The living room lights had come on, and I could vaguely see movement behind the drapes.  About three minutes after the lights came on, the front door opened, and dark figures began leaving the house.

“Aaaaah!” someone screamed.

“Whoa!” a girl answered.  “Where did that come from?”  I thought it sounded like Jeanette speaking, so the scream was probably Mike seeing the snake.

“Dude, you guys got hit!” a guy said loudly.  Possibly Lars Ashford.

“What?” answered a second female voice, whom I was pretty sure was Lorraine.

“Holy crap!” exclaimed a third female voice loudly.  “Mike, they got your car!  This was someone who knew you were gonna be here tonight!”  I saw the outline of this girl’s body and curly hair in enough light to recognize her as Kristina Kasparian, the girl who gave me her extra Bible the previous winter.

“Wow,” Mike said after seeing his car.

“It must have been someone who knew about that time last year with Mike and the snake,” Lars said.

“This has Alex McCann written all over it!” Lorraine shouted.  I giggled a little, because Alex McCann was not involved in this prank in any way.  I hoped that they could not see or hear us across the street.

“We better go inside and clean this up,” Jeanette said.

As everyone was walking back through the front door, Brian loudly whispered, “Go!  Go!”  I started the car, made a sharp U-turn, and turned north on K Street.  Brian and Shawn began cheering loudly enough for the others to hear, with the windows still rolled down, and I joined in, also honking the horn.

“That was perfect!” Brian exclaimed, as he and Shawn climbed back into actual seats and buckled their seat belts and I rolled up the windows.

“Yes!” I replied.  I held my hand up behind me in a high-five pose, while facing forward keeping my eyes on the road and my other hand on the steering wheel.  Brian and Shawn both slapped my hand.  “That was so cool!” I said.

“Now both of you are sworn to secrecy.  If anyone ever asks you about this night, say nothing.  Find a way to deny it.”

“Of course.”

I never said a word, and no one ever suspected me.  Shawn’s idea to take my car, which none of them recognized, was ultimately the little detail that enabled us to get away with this prank for so long.  A couple weeks later, after we got back from Outreach Camp, Brian told me that Lorraine had mentioned the prank in the camp cafeteria one day and asked him if he was involved, or knew who was.  Brian played dumb and acted like he did not know.

Despite Brian’s insistence on our vow of silence, he was the one who finally cracked.  Months later, in the spring, Brian mentioned to me that this night had come up as a topic of conversation, and he admitted his involvement to Lorraine.  He did not, however, implicate me or Shawn in that conversation.  As far as I know, none of the people in the house that night ever knew that I was involved, or that my red Bronco was parked right across the street as they discovered our prank.

Over the course of my life, particularly my early twenties, I was involved in many more pranks involving toilet paper.  If God watched down on all of us and kept a ledger of how many rolls of toilet paper each of us had thrown with mischievous intent, compared to many rolls others had used playing pranks against us, my ledger would be far out of balance with many more rolls given than received.  Hopefully, everyone who ever got pranked by a group including me knows that it was done in love and with no malicious intent.  Sometimes it was obvious to the recipient who was involved, sometimes it remained a mystery, but when asked about these pranks, I always played dumb and never gave away my secrets.

When I was younger, I would often lament all the things I missed out on in childhood, because of my sheltered upbringing and lack of childhood friends.  However, I have also come to find a silver lining: with so much that I never did when I was young, I still had lots of new things to enjoy as a young adult.  Some of the people who played a lot of pranks in childhood engage in more risky behavior as young adults, because the thrill of a simple prank has worn off, but for me, it just took a simple night of toilet-papering to feel like one of the best nights of my life.  The world is such a big place, and even today, I have so many new experiences to try.

September 2-3, 1996. Moving in and getting mail. (#99)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 5 Comments

“This is the front door key, and this is the mail key,” the woman in the office at Sagebrush Apartments explained, placing the keys on the desk as I filled out paperwork.  “Looks like you have roommates; are they all moving in today?”

“Shawn should be here later today,” I said.  “Brian is moving in later this week, I think.  I’m not sure about Josh.”

The office employee took me around the grounds, showing me where to find the pool, laundry room, and mailboxes, and where to empty garbage.  She handed me a brochure, the same brochure I got when I first came here in May, but this one was the actual color printing, not the blotchy black-and-white photocopy that they had given me on that day when they were out of color copies.  The brochure had a map of the complex on it; she circled my apartment’s location, as well as the locations of the communal areas she had shown me.  “Just come back here if you need anything.  We’re open until six.  And once you get your phone connected, you can call this number.”  She underlined the office phone number.

“I will,” I said.  “Thanks.”

I walked back to the car in the office parking lot.  Mom and Dad were parked next to me, waiting in Dad’s gray pickup truck.  “I have the keys,” I said.  “Follow me.”  I drove my red Ford Bronco around to the back of the complex and parked next to building K.  Sagebrush Apartments consisted of around a dozen small buildings, named with letters, each containing six to eight individual apartment units.  While I waited for Dad to find a parking place, I looked through the brochure that I had gotten from the office.  Inside, on the second page, was the floor plan for each of the different types of apartments, and as I looked at my apartment, I saw something that made me recoil in horror and shame.  I may have made a huge mistake when I signed this lease four months ago.

On the blotchy photocopy I was given in May, when I was deciding between this apartment and another one, it looked like the large bedroom that I would be sharing with Shawn was 11 by 18 feet.  But on this clear copy, it was definitely 11 by 13 feet. The other place I had considered did have a very large bedroom, and I had told Shawn and Brian that the two places were similarly sized, and this one was less expensive.  I supposed, however, that if the others wanted to save money, they did not have room to complain about the place being a little small.

I tried to hide my disappointment at the room size when I unlocked the door and went inside, Mom and Dad behind me.  “This is nice!” Mom said.  “There’s that wood-burning stove you told me about.  That’ll come in handy when it gets cold.”  The stove was right in front of the door, with a stairway on the left leading upstairs to a small loft and the three bedrooms.  The living room was on the right, with the dining area straight ahead and the kitchen to the right of the living room, open to the living room through a bar behind the sink.

I went upstairs to my bedroom and looked around.  It was not huge, but not as tiny as I had feared.  I said to Mom and Dad, “Claire from church has a bed loft she’s going to sell me, with a desk underneath.  Do you remember Claire?”

“I’m not sure,” Mom replied.  I remembered Mom saying something embarrassing about Claire when she and Dad came to church with me freshman year, and I chose not to remind her.  

“Once I get that set up, I’ll have more room,” I said.

“That’ll be good.  You said Shawn is moving in later today?”

“Yeah.  I think so.  He’s back in Jeromeville already for his student teaching program.”

“Oh yeah, he’s going to be a teacher.  What’s he teaching?”

“High school math.”

“I didn’t know he was a math guy too.  But you met him from that Christian group, right?”

“Yes. Jeromeville Christian Fellowship.  He was my Bible study leader last year.”

Mom and Dad and I emptied the truck of the things we brought from home.  Next, we drove across Jeromeville to Second Street Self Storage, where I had stored everything from the old apartment.  It took us two trips to unload it all.  The Post Office was just around the corner from the storage unit, and we stopped there on the second trip.  I waited in line for five minutes, then I filled out a form to have mail forwarded to the new apartment and picked up the mail they had been holding.  Coupons and other junk mail.  Notices from utilities acknowledging that I had canceled service at the old apartment.  And a letter, in a small, off-white envelope.  When I saw who it was from, I felt an excited surge of adrenaline run through my body, and I tried to make myself look calm and normal when I got back in the truck.

“Did you get anything good?” Mom asked when she saw me holding a stack of mail.

“A lot of junk,” I said.  “And a letter.”

“Who’s it from?”

A sweet girl with pretty blue eyes, I wanted to say.  I wish I had the guts to ask her out.  And even though she’s a good Christian girl and I know it’s wrong, I wish both of us could fit on Claire’s bed loft.  “A girl from JCF,” I said instead.  “Named Haley.”

When we got home with the rest of my things from the storage unit, I put Haley’s letter and my other mail on top of the dresser.  I wanted to read it, but I also wanted to finish moving, and I did not want to read the letter in front of anyone.  I put the mattress on the floor, where the bed loft would eventually go, with my computer on the floor next to it.  That would not be particularly comfortable; I needed to call Claire soon.

We moved the rest of my furniture, what little I had, into the apartment.  The bookshelf went into the bedroom, between the mattress and the closet.  The television, the little table that held it, and the chair I sat on while watching it went into the empty living room; I would adjust it as necessary after the others brought more living room furniture.  We kept my kitchen and bathroom supplies, and my books and clothes, in boxes; I would unpack those gradually over the next couple days.  We left the box spring and the folding table I used as a desk in the truck, for Mom and Dad to take home; I would have no need for those once I got the bed loft set up.

After we finished unpacking, Mom and Dad took me to McDonald’s, where I ordered an Arch Deluxe.  “Are those any good?” Mom asked.  “I haven’t tried one yet.”

“I think so.  I like it.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“It’s on a different kind of bun, with special sauce, and supposedly higher quality ingredients.  It’s supposed to be marketed more toward adults.”

“I’ll try it next time.  I’d ask for a taste, but I don’t want to eat your burger.”

“Sounds good.”

“So what do you have going on in the next few weeks?  You’re going to that camp with JCF, right?”

“Yeah.  The camp is the 16th through the 20th.”

“Where is it?”

“A retreat center somewhere outside of Green Meadows.  About a two hour drive.”

“Is Taylor going to be there?”

“I don’t think so.  He’s been more involved with his church lately instead of JCF.”

“Are Liz and Ramon going to be there?”

“Yes.”

“Will that Haley girl be there?”

“I’m not sure. Probably.”

Mom, apparently having exhausted all of my friends whose names she could think of at the moment, changed the subject, telling me about my brother Mark and his friends and the start of their school year a week ago.  It was Mark’s first year of high school, and so far he seemed to be enjoying it.

After we finished eating, Mom wrote me a check for three hundred dollars.  “This is for when you go grocery shopping,” she explained, “and anything else you might need for the new place.”

“Thank you,” I said.

When we got back to the new apartment, we had to park several spaces down from where we were before, because a moving truck was in our old parking space.  Shawn and a guy I did not know were figuring out how best to unload a couch from the truck.

“Hey, Greg,” Shawn said, seeing me out of the corner of his eye.

“Hi.  How’s moving going?”

“We got most of my big things unloaded.  Looks like you did too.”

“Yes.  Mom and Dad, this is Shawn.”

Shawn walked over to shake my parents’ hands.  “Nice to meet you,” he said.

“You too!” Mom replied.  “We were just going to head out.  We have a long drive back to Plumdale.  And it looks like you guys have everything under control.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Enjoy the new apartment,” Mom said, giving me a hug.  “And good luck with the new school year, and with camp.  Nice meeting you, Shawn.”

Dad hugged me afterward.  “Dad loves you,” he said.

“You too,” I replied.

After Mom and Dad left, while Shawn was busy with the couch, I went upstairs to read Haley’s letter, quickly, so that Shawn would not see me.

August 29, 1996

Dear Greg,

Thanks so much for writing!  I was glad to hear about your summer so far.  Sorry it took me a while to write back. I’ve been so busy!  It sounds like your new apartment with Brian and Shawn will be good, and it’s in a good location too.  You mentioned Urbana – that’s exciting!  I’ve heard great things about it.  It’s awesome that you want to know more about how God has called you to serve Him.  I haven’t decided yet if I’m going.  I really want to, but I’m just not sure if I can.

Summer has been great so far!  I’m working at a kids’ day camp, which is so much fun!  It’s been very nice to be home relaxing with my parents.  I love summer!  Tomorrow is the last day of work, so I’m really excited for the next three weeks of relaxing vacation.

Well, thanks again for your letter!  I love getting mail!  Have a great end of the summer.  I’ll see you in a few weeks!

In Christ,
Haley

That was sweet, I thought.  Haley actually wrote me back, finally.  I smiled and put the letter in a drawer, thinking about what I would say when I wrote to her next.  After that, I found the box where my telephone was, plugged it in, and dialed Claire’s number.  As I was waiting for an answer, I realized that if I got Claire’s answering machine, I was not entirely sure what number to tell her to call back.  I assumed that Brian had successfully transferred his telephone service to the new apartment, since there was a dial tone, so my phone number was now Brian’s number.  However, I had not actually confirmed this with Brian or Shawn.

“Hello?” a female voice said, making that thought a moot point.

“Is Claire there?” I asked.

“This is Claire.”

“Hi.  This is Greg.  I’m unpacking, and I was calling to ask about the bed loft.”

“Yes!  Are you ready for it?”

“I am, but I don’t know if it’ll all fit in my car.”

“My new roommate is coming up tomorrow with a U-Haul.  Can we just drop it off after she finishes unpacking?”

“Sure!  That’ll be perfect!”

“You’ll probably need a ratchet to put it together.  Do you have one?”

“No, but I can get one.  It’s probably a good thing to have around.”

“Good idea.  I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Yes!  Sounds good!”

After the phone call, I went downstairs and helped Shawn until we got everything out of his truck.  This place was starting to feel livable, although when it was time for bed and I slept on my mattress on the floor, it suddenly felt a little less livable.


The following afternoon, Claire arrived with the disassembled bed loft in the truck.  “Here it is,” she said.  “These two big pieces go on the ends, and this long flat one is the desk underneath.  These two go across the top to support the bed, and then these three flat pieces go between them.  You put the mattress on top of those.  And those go diagonally to brace the corners.  All the nuts and bolts are in that bag.”

“I think I get it.”

“These other pieces over here, you can make a shelf that goes around the desk.  But that’s optional.”

“I see.”

“I don’t remember exactly how that goes.  My dad built this for my older sister when she was in college.  It’s been great, but I don’t need it anymore.  I’m excited to have my own room!”

“I’m a little nervous about not having my own room,” I replied.  “But this will help with both of us fitting into that space.”

“Definitely!  Should we start carrying it in?”

“Sure,” I said.

With Claire’s help, I carefully carried all the bed pieces upstairs into the bedroom.  “This is a nice place,” Claire said.  “It has an upstairs.  And a wood stove.”

“I know.  That’ll be useful in the winter.”

After several trips up and down the stairs, we finished unloading the bed; I was sweating and breathing heavily by now.  “Thank you,” I said, giving Claire the fifty dollars we had agreen upon for the bed loft.

“You’re welcome!  I’ll see you at church?”

“Yes,” I replied.  “Bye.  Have a good one.”

“You too!”

After Claire left, I went upstairs, trying to figure out exactly how to assemble the bed.  First, I got out the new ratcheting socket wrench I had bought that morning.  I propped up the two large side pieces, wondering if it mattered which was the right and which was the left.  The side pieces had holes for the diagonal braces, which went in the back; I used this to figure out which one was which.  Next, I found the two long beams that went across left to right, and attached those to the right side piece, with the extra holes in the back again.  Each beam attached to each side with two bolts.  I tried to attach the diagonal pieces next, but I seemed to be missing a bolt, so I only attached one diagonal brace.  Next, I bolted each of the three flat pieces that held the mattress to the frame.  I adjusted the position of the bed in the room, making sure the back and the right were almost touching the walls, but not quite.  This would definitely make the room feel less crowded.

After that, I lifted the mattress into position.  Then I slid the desk, which was really more of a table, underneath the mattress.  The table did not attach with bolts; it rested on wood bars that protruded from the side pieces.  Finally, I shoved the unused shelf pieces under the table, and I moved the ladder up against the frame, near where the pillow would eventually go.  I took a step backward and admired my work, then I got in the shower, since I was dripping sweat at this point.  This was perfect.  After I got out of the shower, I read Haley’s letter again, then I sat at the desk under the bed, found a sheet of paper, and began writing.

September 3, 1996

Dear Haley,

Hi!  Thanks for writing!  It was so good to hear from you!  I’m getting settled in the new apartment.  Shawn moved in yesterday too, and Brian is coming later this week.  It’s been an adjustment sharing the large bedroom, but Claire Seaver sold me her old bed loft, so that saves a lot of room.

I added no further context to the name “Claire Seaver.”  I knew that Haley and Claire knew each other, through an embarrassing moment that happened back in the spring.

The rest of my summer was fun.  My birthday was August 15, and my Bible study made me cupcakes.  I wasn’t expecting that at all.  Then I went to my parents’ house for a couple weeks.  My brother and his friends and I have this game called Moport, like a cross between soccer and hockey and football, and we had a two-on-two Moport tournament.  I’ve been riding my bike a lot too.

I hope you get to go to Urbana.  I keep hearing such good things about it.  As a new Christian, I don’t know if I’m ready to go fly overseas and preach the Gospel, but I want to find out what kind of service opportunities are out there, especially with so many of my friends doing stuff like that.  I saw the guys from J-Cov when they got back from Morocco; it sounds like that was a great experience.

I’m excited for Outreach Camp!  I’ve never been up that way.  And it’ll be good to see everyone.  It’ll be good to get more involved with JCF and find out what God wants me to do.

What classes are you taking this quarter?  I’m taking advanced calculus, numerical analysis, and Intro to New Testament.  I’ve heard such good things about New Testament and the professor.  I’m going to do chorus too.  People from my church choir keep telling me I should, and Amelia said the same thing at Bible study once.  You said you used to do chorus, right?  Is the audition hard?  I’m a little nervous.  I forget; are you going to Outreach Camp?  I’ll see you soon!

Sincerely,
Greg

As I have gotten older, I have noticed that one peculiarity of adulthood, particularly for a storyteller like me, is that certain inanimate objects will acquire backstories because of memories of how they were acquired.  To this day, I still have Claire’s bed loft.  I used it as my bed for the remaining five years that I lived with different combinations of roommates in Jeromeville, as well as two living situations later in life when I rented a room in someone else’s house.  When I bought my current house, in my early thirties, Claire’s bed loft became a storage shelf in the garage for a while.  I set it up again some time later as the guest bed, where it remains today, and it became my bed again for four months when my house was torn up for repairs and I had nowhere to move my regular bed.  Claire’s bed loft was quite possibly the best fifty dollars I have ever spent.

I walked to the mailboxes and dropped Haley’s letter in the outgoing mail slot.  It was warm and breezy, with that smell of late summer afternoon all around me.  A day like today felt exactly like the way life should be.  I had the next two weeks to get used to living with Shawn and Brian and Josh.  Then I would be spending a week in God’s creation with dozens of my brothers and sisters in Christ.  And I would see Haley soon.  Great things were going to happen this year.  I knew it.

August 15-21, 1996. My final week in Apartment 124. (#97)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 10 Comments

The closest thing Jeromeville has to an industrial area is East Second Street.  East of downtown, the street follows a railroad track all the way to the city limits, running parallel to Highway 100 just on the other side of the railroad track.  I drove down East Second Street, past the frog pond, under the new overpass that had trees in it, and into the small parking lot of Second Street Self Storage.  The entrance to the office opened to the right side of the parking lot.  Behind the parking lot and office were about five or six long buildings with dozens of garage-type doors on each side; a sliding gate separated the parking lot from this area.

I walked into the office, where a middle-aged man sat at a desk.  “Hello,” he said.  “May I help you?”

“I called about fifteen minutes ago, asking about the 6 by 8 unit,” I replied.  “Was that you that I talked to?”

“It sure was.  You’re still interested?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I’ll need you to fill this out,” he said, handing me a small stack of papers.  He explained the terms and conditions, the hours that I was able to access the storage unit, and what I would have to do in order to get my cleaning deposit back.  “Do you know if you’re going to keep the unit long term, or just temporarily?”

“Probably just for one month,” I replied.  “I just need a place to put my stuff until my new apartment is ready, and that’ll be the first week of September.”

“I see.  We get a lot of one-month rentals around this time of year for that reason.”

“Makes sense,” I said.  Most of the large apartment complexes in Jeromeville use the same lease terms, specifically written in coordination with the Associated Students organization, in order to be favorable to student renters.  Leases usually begin September 1 at noon and end August 31 at noon, leaving students who do not renew their leases for the following year without a place to stay for one night.  During the end of August and beginning of September, cleaning and remodeling crews in Jeromeville are working overtime, cleaning apartments as soon as students move out and hurrying to have them ready before new students move in.

After I filled out the papers, I got out my checkbook and wrote a check for the rent and cleaning deposit.  “May I see your ID?” the man asked when I handed him the check.  I handed him my driver’s license.  He looked at it, started to look at the check, but then did a double take and read my driver’s license again.  “It’s your birthday,” he said.

“It is,” I replied, smiling slightly.

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

I went home after I finished at Second Street Self Storage.  I had no special birthday plans.  Tonight was Bible study, but that was my normal plan for Thursdays.  I had not made a big deal of my birthday in a long time.  I remember my family having birthday parties for me in early childhood.  I had my sixth and seventh birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese’s, which was new to my area at the time.  After that, I decided I did not want birthday parties anymore.  The other kids in my class were mean to me, so I had no one I particularly wanted to invite.  I would get presents from my family, but other than that, little recognition was made of my birthday, at my own request.  That was what I was used to.

When I arrived home, before I went to the apartment, I walked to the mailbox.  I saw three envelopes in my mailbox.  One was a credit card bill.  One appeared to be a birthday card from Mom.  The third envelope had unfamiliar handwriting; I got excited at this, hoping that it might be from Haley Channing since I had written to her early last week.  It was not from Haley; the return address said, S. Madison, 809 Walnut Lane, Sunnyglen.  It took me a few seconds to process why someone named S. Madison from Sunnyglen, over 100 miles away, would have sent me a birthday card.

“Ha!” I exclaimed out loud when I figured out what this card was.  Six months ago, I had been sitting at a table on campus with my friend Scott Madison.  He was showing me his fancy new organizer.  As a joke, I flipped ahead to August 15, and wrote “Greg’s birthday” in Scott’s organizer.  Scott went home for the summer, but apparently he was still using his organizer, because he had actually sent me a card.  My little joke had turned into a thoughtful gesture.  I opened the card when I got home; it had a drawing of sheep on a roller coaster, and on the inside it said, “Hope your birthday is filled with sheep thrills!”  Scott had written, “Happy birthday, Greg!  I hope that you’re having a good summer.  I’m working, but I miss Jeromeville a lot!  See you in the fall!”  I do not know if Scott remembered my birthday in future years, but I do get Christmas cards from Scott and his family to this day.

The light on my answering machine was blinking, one blink with a long pause in between, meaning that I had one message.  I pressed Play.  “Hey, Greg.  This is Shawn Yang.  I was just checking when the new apartment will be ready, so we can figure out who will be first to move in, get the keys, all that stuff.  Call me back.  Bye.”  I picked up the phone and dialed Shawn’s number at his parents’ house in Ashwood.

“Hello?” a voice that sounded like Mr. Yang said.

“Hi.  Is Shawn there?”

“He went out for a run.  He’ll be back soon.  Who is this?”

“This is Greg.  I’m one of his roommates for next year in Jeromeville.  I met you at the graduation party.”

“Oh, yeah!”  Mr. Yang exclaimed.  “The tall Mexican guy!”

I snickered a little, trying to hold back laughter, hoping that Mr. Yang could not hear my reaction.  “Tell him to call me back.  I’ll be at Bible study from seven to nine tonight, but I’ll be here the rest of the day.”

“I’ll do that.  You have a good day.”

“You too.  Bye.”  I hung up the phone and started laughing loudly at Mr. Yang’s description of me.  I was not Mexican, although I did occasionally get mistaken for Mexican, because of the dark complexion that I got from the Italian great-grandfather whom I never met.  A few months after this, Shawn said something about his father having no filter.  I told Shawn about this conversation, and he replied incredulously, “He actually said that?”  We both started laughing.

Shawn did call me back later; I would be the first to arrive at the new apartment on September 2, with Shawn arriving the following weekend.  Shawn would relay the message to the others; he thought Brian was moving in the same weekend as him, and none of us had heard from Josh yet.  I went to Bible study later that night, and after the study, Lillian and Chris, the leaders, asked if anyone had prayer requests.  A few people asked for prayer for classes, roommate drama, and a friend who did not know Jesus.

“Any other prayer requests?” Lillian asked.

“I have one,” I said.  “My mom is coming up next Tuesday.  We’re going to move my stuff into storage, and then I’m going home for a couple weeks, and when I come back, I’ll move into the new apartment, with Shawn and Brian and Josh.  I’ve never had roommates before.  So just pray that the moving process will go well.”

“We can do that.”

“I think you’re really gonna like living with those guys,” Amelia Dye added.  Amelia was a year older than me; I had met her at Jeromeville Christian Fellowship at some point during the previous school year.  She was the girlfriend of Scott Madison, who had sent me the card with the sheep.

“I hope so,” I replied.

We began prayer requests a few minutes later.  Each person took turns praying for the person sitting to our left.  I prayed for Amelia’s friend who did not know Jesus.  As the others finished their prayer requests, I heard someone get up and move, but I thought nothing of it at the time.

“Father God,” Lillian said, “I pray for Greg’s living situation.  I pray that the move will go smoothly, that he and his mom will be able to get everything packed and cleaned.  I pray that Greg will adjust to living with these other men of God.  I pray that Greg, Shawn, Brian, and Josh will enjoy fellowshipping with each other, and that as roommates, they will grow closer to God together.  And I pray for all of us, that we will take what we learned in our study tonight and apply it to our lives this week.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.”  I opened my eyes; Amelia was no longer sitting next to me.  Lillian spoke again before the group had time to disperse.  “One more thing,” she said.  “We heard it’s Greg’s birthday, so we have cupcakes tonight.”

Wait, I thought, what?  Cupcakes?  For me?  As Lillian finished speaking, Amelia and Chris emerged from the kitchen, each carrying a muffin pan with twelve cupcakes.  The cupcakes in Amelia’s pan had chocolate frosting, and the ones in Chris’ pan had white frosting.  The cupcakes had lit candles on top.  Lillian led everyone in the room singing “Happy Birthday.” I smiled through the entire song.

“Make a wish!” Amelia said.

I closed my eyes.  I wanted to wish for better friendships with my JCF friends in the next school year.  I also wanted to wish that I would get to go on a date with Haley Channing after she came back to Jeromeville next month.  I panicked and blew in the general direction of the cake before deciding which one to wish for.  I opened my eyes; all the candles had been extinguished.  At that moment, I noticed that exactly four of the two dozen cupcakes did not have candles in them.  “Twenty candles,” I said.  “I just noticed.  Nice.”

“Is that right?” Chris asked.

“Yes.  I turned 20 today.”

As I bit into my cupcake, one of the ones with white frosting, I wondered how they knew that it was my birthday.  I had not told Lillian or Chris.  But after Bible study last week, I had mentioned my upcoming birthday to Ramon and Jason.  Also, since Scott remembered to send me a card, he could have easily told Amelia.  I was pretty sure he knew that we both attended this Bible study for the summer.  I realized a minute later that this had been the first time in thirteen years that I had celebrated my birthday with friends.  I stopped celebrating my birthday as a child because I did not have friends that I wanted to celebrate with, but this year was different; I had friends, and I got to celebrate with them.


Five days later, I sat in my apartment reading, waiting for the knock on the door that eventually came in mid-afternoon.  I got up to open the door.  “Hello,” Mom said, entering the apartment after I stepped aside.  She had made the trip in Dad’s gray Ford pickup truck, which was now parked just outside.  She gave me a hug.  “This is for you,” she continued, handing me a rectangular wrapped gift.  “The rest of your presents are back home.  Most of them are things for the new apartment, so it didn’t make sense to bring them now.  But you can have this now.”

I took the gift; it was unexpectedly heavy, probably a book.  I opened it; it was The World According to Dave Barry.  Dave Barry had a weekly column that appeared in newspapers around the country; I faithfully read his column and found him hilarious.  “Thank you!”  I said.  “So where do we start?”

“What still needs to be done?” Mom asked.

“Pretty much everything.”  Mom and I started with the closet, putting clothes in boxes but setting aside one change of clothes for tomorrow.  From there, we moved to the living room, packing books in boxes, but deciding to wait until tomorrow to disconnect the television, stereo, or computer, in case we still needed to use any of them.

After working for a couple hours, I was hungry.  “Are we going to go out to dinner?” I asked.

“No,” Mom replied.  “We have to use up all the food in your refrigerator.”

“Oh, yeah,” I replied, disappointed.  I was in the mood for an Arch Deluxe, and it would have been nice to have Mom pay for it, but she was right.  I had not been thinking about the upcoming move in my recent grocery store trips, so I did not make a conscious effort to keep the refrigerator and freezer empty.  We had to eat the food I already had, so it would not go to waste.  We ate Hungry-Man dinners while Mom told me about her drive up here and shared the latest drama with her coworkers.

“I’m off work for Labor Day on September 2, and Dad was able to get that day off work,” Mom said at one point.  “So we’ll come up that day with the truck and help you move into the new apartment.  Does that still work?”

“Yeah.”

“When are the other guys moving in?”

“Shawn and Brian will be up the weekend after Labor Day.  I haven’t heard from Josh.”

We continued packing and organizing that night, staying up until almost midnight.  Mom brought a sleeping bag; I offered for her to use the bed, and I would sleep on the floor, but she insisted that I use the bed.  The next day, she complained quite a bit how uncomfortable it had been to sleep on the floor.  I said that she should have taken the bed, but she still insisted she was okay.

After a breakfast of more Hungry-Man dinners, we finished packing, putting everything into boxes until the boxes were full.  We used trash bags for the clothes in my closet.  Mom had brought a cooler with ice packs to salvage what food was left in the refrigerator, but some of it we had to throw away.  We made two trips to Second Street Self-Storage during the course of the day, both with the truck completely full.  I had hoped that we would only need to make one trip, but that was unrealistic.

We returned from Second Street Self-Storage early in the afternoon.  The apartment had been emptied of all of my things; all that remained was the refrigerator and microwave that came with the apartment and the cleaning supplies that Mom had brought.  We spent the afternoon cleaning.  Mom started in the kitchen, and I started in the bathroom, although I felt that I did not know what I was doing.  The toilet paper roll handle had begun coming loose from the wall a couple months ago; fixing that would probably come out of my deposit.  The bathtub was covered in soap scum and mildew, because I had never lived on my own before and I did not know the importance of regular cleaning.  This was the first time the bathtub had been cleaned since I had moved in a year ago.  Even with lots of spraying and scrubbing, the soap scum and mildew did not all come off.  The toilet and sink were easier to clean, fortunately.

“How are you doing?” Mom came in to ask after I had been working in the bathroom for about an hour.

“The soap scum isn’t really coming off,” I replied, gesturing toward the bathtub.  “And the handle of the toilet paper roller is loose.”

“You can try spraying it a second time.  Some of that just might not come off, and it’ll come out of our deposit.”

I tried cleaning the bathtub a second time after I finished with the sink.  A little bit more of the soap scum came off eventually.  “What should I do now?” I asked Mom when I finished.

“Start scrubbing dirt off the walls,” Mom answered.  “I’m almost done in the kitchen.”

“How?”

“You can use a sponge with soap, and then rinse it with a damp paper towel.  They’re probably going to paint, I would think.”

A large dark discoloration spread for about three feet across the wall, a foot up from the floor, in the spot where my computer and table had been.  I realized that this was the spot where I often put my feet while I was working at the computer, and that is what had caused this dirty spot.  Disgusting.  I scrubbed it off after much scrubbing with the sponge, along with some of the paint underneath.

“I need a break,” I said.

“Don’t take too long of a break!” Mom replied, sounding annoyed, as she worked on mopping the kitchen floor.  “We need to get this done soon!  I have to work tomorrow, and you need to turn in the keys.”

“All right,” I said, moving on to other dirty spots.  I was exhausted and dripping with sweat, but I kept going.  We finished at 5:37, twenty-three minutes before the apartment office closed.  I went through the apartment one last time to get everything we had left behind.  I took out two large bags of trash and went back into the apartment one last time to make sure the lights were turned off.  I went to the office to turn in my keys, checking the mailbox on the way; all I had was junk mail, still no card from Haley.  I also made sure that I had packed my car with everything I needed for two weeks back home.

“That’s it,” I said.  “Ready to go home?”

“Yes.  I’ll just see you there.  You know the way; we don’t need to try to stay together.”

“Sounds good.”

Mom pulled out of the parking lot at Las Casas Apartments, and I followed her.  We turned west on Coventry Boulevard and then south on Highway 117, following it to westbound 100, southbound 6, and southbound 11 until we reached Plumdale.  It was almost dark when we finally arrived home at a quarter to nine.  I showered as soon as I got home; I usually did not shower at night, but I still felt so dirty from all the cleaning today.  I went to bed early.

My year of living alone was over, and so were my teens.  I did not take the best care of that apartment, but I had learned some things to do differently next time, and I did get a little bit of my security deposit back.  When I got back to Jeromeville, I would have a new challenge of learning to live with roommates, including sharing a bedroom with Shawn.  But I would also be much less disconnected, having people in the apartment with me.  My little studio apartment number 124 had served its purpose well, but now I had moved on to something else for the beginning of my twenties.

May 1996. Looking for a place to live. (#80)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 30 Comments

“So let’s talk about next year,” Brian said after we made small talk.  “I definitely want my own room.”

“Me too,” Josh replied.  This meeting with my roommates for next year was my first time meeting Josh.  He was stocky and a little on the short side, with light brown hair and pointy facial features.

“So I guess we’re sharing a bedroom, unless we can find a really cheap four-bedroom place,” Shawn said to me.

“I can do that,” I said.  I hoped the disappointment was not evident in my voice.  I did not particularly want to share a bedroom, but I was not going to make a fuss over it.  “Are we definitely looking for a house, not an apartment?  Is an apartment out of the question?”

“A house would be nice,” Brian replied, “but if we can’t find a house, an apartment would be better than nothing.”

“What else do we need to look for?” I asked.  “Anything else we need to get?  Like, do we want to make sure the place has a dishwasher?  Anything like that?”

“I think most places will have a dishwasher,” Josh said.

“I just said that because my little studio apartment I have now doesn’t have a dishwasher,” I explained.

“Really?” Josh asked.

“Actually, we have a dishwasher,” Brian said.  “His name is Shawn.”

“Come on,” Shawn replied.  “I’m not going to clean up after all of you.”

“I’m just kidding.  But Shawn always does a good job of keeping the kitchen clean.”

“Good to know,” I said.

We spent the next half hour or so discussing our budget, our schedules, and anything else we could think of related to being roommates, or just getting to know each other in general.  I was not sure how old Josh was, but I was guessing that I was the youngest one in our household.  Shawn and Brian were both 22 and graduating this year; Shawn, a mathematics major like me, would be in the teacher training program at UJ, and Brian would be on staff with Jeromeville Christian Fellowship part time while he applied to medical school.  Josh worked the night shift at an assisted living facility, and took classes, so he would have an unusual schedule, but he was a heavy sleeper.

“I think Greg is probably going to have to be the contact person for looking at houses and signing the lease and stuff,” Shawn said.  “I don’t mean to dump all the work on you, Greg, but the rest of us have a lot going on, and you’re the only one who will be here this summer.”

“Makes sense,” I said.


I left Shawn and Brian’s house that night with a sense of mission.  I had a job to do.  The next day, I looked at classified ads in both the campus newspaper and the local newspaper.  I called phone numbers to ask about houses for rent.  I left messages, most of which were never returned, and I made appointments to look at houses, on the rare occasion I got someone to answer the phone or actually call back.  Within a couple of days, I had appointments to look at four houses.

The first two appointments were on the same day, an hour apart.  I pulled up to the first house, just a block north of campus near the North Area dormitories.  Living within walking distance of the campus boundary would be convenient, for sure.  The house was painted a pale yellow color; it was in an older neighborhood and showing its age, although nothing appeared to be obviously wrong with it.  This house was a little bit above our price range, but I figured it was worth a look, particularly because it was so close to campus.  If we got it, maybe I could talk the others into paying a little bit more.  A middle-aged man stood on the porch, holding a folder.  I nervously got out of the car and approached him.

“Are you Greg?” the man asked me.

“Yes.”

“I’m Ed.  It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too,” I said, shaking his hand.

“Come on in,” Steve said.  “Let’s take a look at the house.”  I followed Ed into the living room, where a guy with unkempt hair sat on the couch watching TV, ignoring the open textbook on his lap.  “This is Joe, one of the current tenants.”

“Sup,” Joe said in my general direction.

“Hi,” I replied.

I followed Ed around the house.  The living room seemed reasonably sized, and I noticed that the kitchen had a dishwasher.  Ed mentioned that one of the bedrooms was pretty large with a bathroom attached, but that the current tenant did not want people seeing it.

“And the third bedroom is a converted garage,” Ed said as we entered the room, stepping down because the floor was slightly lower.  It was much larger than the other bedroom that he had shown me.  Shawn and I could comfortably share either of the two large bedrooms.

“The biggest selling point of this house, though, is that it’s so close to campus,” Ed explained. “You might be able to find a bigger house for this price in east Jeromeville, but then you’ll have a long trip to school every day.”

“That’s true,” I said.

“So are you still interested?” Ed asked.

“Definitely.”

“Now, just to be honest, a few other people have looked at the house, so I can’t promise you’ll get it.  But fill this out, and I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

“Thank you,” I said.

The next house was only a quarter mile away, and by the time I was done looking at Ed’s house, it was almost time for my other appointment.  The landlord whom I had spoken with was a woman named Barbara, and she said to meet her outside the house.  This house looked a little more well kept up from the outside, but it was slightly smaller by total square feet.  An older gray-haired woman sat on the porch; I walked up and asked, “Are you Barbara?”

“Yes,” she said.  “You must be Greg.”

“Yes.  It’s nice to meet you.”

“Someone else is coming now to look at the house too, just so you know,” Barbara said.  I had no idea if it was normal to show the house to two competing prospective tenants at the time time, but I found this discouraging and also a little bit rude.  Barbara asked me about what I was studying, and about the others who would be living with me, as she waited for the other prospective tenant to show up.  Three girls drove up a few minutes later and introduced themselves to Barbara.

“This is Greg,” Barbara said to the girls.  “He’s looking at the house too.”

“Hi,” one of them said unenthusiastically.  I greeted her back.

“This is the living room,” Barbara said as we walked into the house.

“I love the color of the paint!” one of the girls said.

“Thank you!” Barbara replied.  I looked for the dishwasher in the kitchen as we walked through it, and then Barbara opened the door and showed us the backyard.

“Those flowers are really cute,” the girl who liked the paint said.

I could tell that I was not going to get this house.  The girls seemed to know all the right things to say to Barbara.  I continued going through the motions and following Barbara and the girls through the house, even though it seemed pointless.

The next week was more of the same.  Between classes and homework, I found time to look at four other houses.  Each of the landlords had mentioned that other people had already looked at the house.  One of them pointed out that it was a brand new listing that had just gone on the market today, but by the time I got there, still someone else had looked at it already.  Ed never called me back, Barbara never called me back, and neither did any of the others.  I called Shawn and explained the situation.

“That sucks,” Shawn said.

“Do you think I should start looking at apartments instead?” I asked.  “I don’t know if we’d have any more luck there, but at least we’d have a place to live.”

“That’s true.  I mean, a house would be nice, it’d be great to have our own washing machine, but if all you can find is an apartment with a laundry room, it’s not that big of a deal.”

“I guess.  Should I tell the other guys what’s going on?”

“I’ll tell them.  You just keep looking, and let us know what you find.”

“I will.”


The juxtaposition of a large and growing university next to a small city hostile to growth made rentals difficult to find in Jeromeville, especially now, two months after apartments went up for lease for the fall.  The day after Shawn gave me the approval to start looking at apartments, I walked to the office for Las Casas, my current apartment complex, and asked if any of the three-bedroom apartments were still available for fall.

“No, sorry, we don’t have any left,” the woman at the desk said.  “But the company that owns us, we own 15 different complexes all around Jeromeville, and some of them have three-bedroom apartments.  You can try calling them and see what is left.”  She handed me a brochure.

“Thanks,” I replied, walking back toward my apartment.  This brochure appeared to contain no new information that was not already in the Apartment Guide that Associated Students published every year.

I dedicated the following Saturday to finding a place to live.  I looked through the Apartment Guide and made a mark next to every complex that had three-bedroom apartments.  Since Jeromeville was a university town with many people in shared living situations, three-bedroom apartments were more common here than they were in most cities.  Still, though, many apartment complexes, particularly the older ones close to campus, only had one- and two-bedroom apartments.  Pine Grove Apartments, which had been my second choice a year ago, had the only three-bedroom apartments right next to campus.  I called Pine Grove and was promptly informed that they were completely full for fall.  No surprise there.

The area where I currently lived was part of a roughly L-shaped row of apartment complexes along Alvarez Avenue and Maple Drive, about three-quarters of a mile east to west and half a mile north to south.  I made some phone calls and found three three-bedroom apartments in our price range available in this neighborhood.

I first went across the street to a place called Fleur-de-Lis Apartments.  Apartment complexes always have such weird names, often seemingly having little to do with the surroundings.  I told the person at the desk that I had called earlier about the three bedroom apartment, and a man with a clipboard came to show me what the apartment looked like, explaining that the one he was showing was not the actual unit that would be available for fall.  He called the tenants who had agreed to let him show their three-bedroom apartment; no one answered, so he left a message telling him that we were coming.

He unlocked the door, and we walked inside.  The living and dining areas were a bit smaller than those of any of the houses I had seen.  I saw a dishwasher in the kitchen.  He showed me one of the small bedrooms first; they seemed adequately sized.

“And this is the master bedroom,” he said, opening another door.  “We have the largest master bedrooms of any three-bedroom apartment in Jeromeville.  Some people arrange their furniture so there is a separation between the two halves of the room, so it’s almost like having two bedrooms.”

“That is nice,” I said.  “And there’s an attached bathroom?”

“Yes,” he replied.  “Do you think you’re interested?”

“My roommates trusted me with the decision,” I explained, “but I have two other apartments I’m looking at today, and I like to take time to think about big decisions.”

“Don’t take too long to decide,” the man said.

“I know.  The apartment could be gone by then.  I’ll get back to you by tomorrow at the latest.”

After he gave me all of the necessary paperwork and brochures, I went to Alvarez Grove Apartments, a quarter-mile east on Alvarez Avenue.  I went through the same procedure of telling the man at the desk that I had called about the three-bedroom apartment, and he showed me a three-bedroom apartment which the current tenants had agreed to let him show.  The living area was about the same size as the one at Fleur-de-Lis, and there was a dishwasher.  A hallway extended to the right of the living area; he showed me the bathroom, just off this hallway, and one of the three bedrooms.

“What about the other bedrooms?” I asked.

“They’re all the same.”

“Same size and everything?”

“Yes.”

I took his brochure and politely acted like living at Alvarez Grove was still an option, but at this point I knew that I was not interested in this apartment.  With me and Shawn having to share a bedroom, we definitely needed one of the bedrooms to be larger than the others.  This apartment also only had one bathroom, which was workable but not ideal.  It was the least expensive of the three apartments I was looking at, only $900 per month (which was inexpensive given what the market in Jeromeville was like), but I did not like the idea of sharing a small bedroom.

The last apartment I looked at that day was in a complex called Sagebrush Apartments, in the narrow strip of land between Maple Drive and Highway 117.  The woman from the office unlocked a three-bedroom apartment, reminding me that this was identical to the unit for rent but not the exact unit, and let me in.  I waved hello to a tenant who was home.

This apartment had two uncommon features immediately visible: a wood burning stove with a tall chimney leading to the roof, and a stairway, to the left of the entrance.  The bedrooms were upstairs, in the style of apartment that I have heard some people refer to as a “townhouse.”  The living room was to the right of the entrance, with the dining area straight in front of me, and the kitchen to the right of the dining room, with a bar between the kitchen and living room.  The woman from the apartment office led me around the dining room and kitchen.  “There’s a half-bathroom back there,” she said, pointing to the right of the dining room behind the kitchen.  “Now let me show you upstairs.”

I followed her up the stairs, which were a little narrow but appropriate for a compact living space like this one.  At the top of the stairs was a small loft-like area; I turned around and looked down on the living room, with the black metal chimney of the wood-burning stove in front of me.  “Is that a patio?” I said, looking out the window facing the front of the apartment.

“Yes,” she replied.  “You can get to it from the entrance.”

She showed me the two small bedrooms next, on the back side of the apartment, and the large bedroom in front, above the kitchen and living room.  It was smaller than the one at Fleur-de-Lis, but still adequately sized for two people to share.  She also showed me the inside of the full bathroom upstairs.

“Are you still interested in the apartment?” she asked.  I told her the same thing I had said at Fleur-de-Lis, that I had options to think over and I would get back to her later tonight or tomorrow.  By now, business hours were probably almost over, so if I called back first thing in the morning, hopefully the apartment would not be gone by then.

After I got home, I needed to unwind, so I went for a bike ride, thinking about all of this.  When I got home, I showered, ate dinner, and did math homework.  Later, I looked over the brochures from Sagebrush and Fleur-de-Lis again.  Both apartments looked similarly sized, and both of them would work just fine as far as I was concerned. Shawn, Brian, and Josh seemed to trust my judgment.  We agreed on a budget of $1000 per month when we met to talk about the living situation, and the Fleur-de-Lis apartment rented for exactly that.  Rent at Sagebrush, however, was only $925, and I liked something about the two-story layout.  I knew that I was still going to wait until morning to make the call, but at this point, unless I discovered something earth-shattering, I would be saving my roommates $75 per month and calling Sagebrush in the morning.  I looked over the brochures again.  I read the passage in the Bible from last night’s talk at Jeromeville Christian Fellowship and prayed about it.

And in the morning, I called Sagebrush.  The apartment was still available, so I told them I was ready to commit.

Later that afternoon, after I had signed paperwork, I called Shawn.  I was nervous.  What if the other guys did not like Sagebrush?  What if I just made a costly mistake?  “Hello?” Shawn said on the other side of the phone.

“Shawn?”

“Yes.”

“This is Greg.  I got an apartment.”

“That’s great!  Where is it?”

“Sagebrush.  It’s on Maple Drive, north of Safeway.  It’s $925 a month.  It’s two stories, with the bedrooms upstairs and the living room and kitchen downstairs.”

“That sounds perfect!  I’ll tell the others.  Thanks for all your help with this.”

“You’re welcome.  Thanks for letting me live with you guys.”

I took a deep breath and lay down for a nap, finally feeling relief about my plans for next year for the first time in two months.  I had great roommates, and I had a place to live.  Next year was going to be awesome.  I would have to get used to sharing a bedroom, that was certainly not an ideal situation, but it was better than being homeless or sharing a bedroom with a total stranger.  Living with other Christian men would hopefully present opportunities to grow both socially and spiritually.  I just wish we did not have to wait until September 1 to move in.  I did not realize at the time that I had overlooked something, but it ended up all working out.

April 9, 1996. Friends all over campus and a new plan. (#77)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 10 Comments

Two years ago, when my university applications were being processed, I got invited to something called the Interdisciplinary Honors Program at the University of Jeromeville.  This was a program for around seventy high-achieving freshmen; among other things, we all lived in the same building, and we had to take one class every quarter specifically for IHP students, which counted toward general education requirements.  I was particularly attracted to the idea of being part of a relatively small group of students.  Jeromeville was a huge university, with around 25,000 students on a main campus that took up a square mile, adjacent to several more square miles of farmland used for research.  I found my high school of 1400 already far too big to know everyone, so a school this big seemed intimidating.  Being part of a small group of students who knew each other seemed attractive to me, and this was part of the reason I chose Jeromeville over Central Tech and Bidwell State.

Despite those numbers, however, UJ was starting to feel much smaller now that I had been around for a while.  I encountered people I knew more and more often around campus and around town.  In addition to my friends from the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, I had friends from classes, church, Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, the Math Club, people I knew through mutual friends, and people who I just saw around enough that I started to recognize them and say hi for no other reason.

As I got on the bus that morning, I wondered if I would see Tiffany Rollins.  Tiffany was a civil engineering major, and we had been in a few of the same mathematics and physics classes in the past.  We had finished all of the classes that her major had in common with my mathematics major, though, so we would probably be seeing less of each other as time went on, but last week I saw her on the bus both Tuesday and Thursday morning.  She lived in an apartment complex just down Alvarez Avenue from mine, at the bus stop just before my stop.  I boarded the bus, showed my ID card to the driver, and spotted Tiffany sitting near the back of the bus.

“Hey, Greg,” Tiffany said as I approached her and sat next to her.

“Hey,” I replied.  “How are you?”

“Not bad.  One of my classes is really hard already.  I was up late last night studying.”

“Yeah.  Mine aren’t too bad yet.  I’m just starting to stress over not knowing where I’m going to live next year.”

“You aren’t keeping your studio apartment?”

“I didn’t renew.  I was hoping to find friends to live with.  I almost had a plan, but it fell through.”

“I hope you find something!”

“Me too.  I’ve been asking around.”

“I can let you know if anyone I know is looking for a guy.”

“That would be nice,” I said, although I was really hoping not to have to do that.  I wanted to live with people I knew who would be fun to be around, not some strangers who happened to know Tiffany.  Granted, those strangers could end up becoming friends, but they could also end up being my worst nightmare.

I was still thinking about this all through weight training class.  Yesterday, when I got home from campus, I had a note in my mailbox at the apartment saying that I had a package to pick up.  When I went into the office to get my package, the woman at the desk had asked me how I was doing, and I explained that I was worried about not having a place to live for next year.

“I have a note here from the other front desk person that someone came in here earlier looking for a roommate,” she said.  She wrote “Alex Davidson” and a phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to me.  “I guess Alex renewed his lease but his roommate is moving out, so maybe you should give Alex a call.”

I gave some kind of noncommittal answer and returned to my apartment.  I would not be giving Alex a call.  Because Jeromeville was a small world and I knew a lot of people, I was familiar with the name Alex Davidson.  The front desk person had not spoken to Alex directly, so she did not realize that Alex was a girl.  I did not know her well, but she was in my Chemistry 2B class a year ago; I remembered seeing her write her name on something, and her name stood out to me because most people named Alex I knew were male.  I did not feel comfortable with a female roommate.  It would just feel weird, and also I ran with circles that would question the nature of the relationship of a single male and a single female living together.  Sure, Heather Escamilla from church lived with her boyfriend, but I also knew people that had the same judgmental attitude toward that arrangement.  I did not find Alex Davidson particularly attractive, though, so if somehow we did end up living together, we probably would not develop any kind of awkward sexual tension.

After weight training class, I walked across campus toward the Memorial Union.  I had been coughing and sniffling off and on for the last few weeks, not enough to feel sick and stay home from classes but enough to notice.  As I approached the Memorial Union, I saw a quiet short-haired girl sitting quietly on a bench reading.  It was Skeeter, a friend from the IHP who lived upstairs from me last year.  Just as I was about to say hi, I coughed, and Skeeter heard me and looked up.  “Hey, Greg,” she said.

“Hi.  How’s it going?”

“It’s funny.  I recognized your cough.”

“Wait, what?”

“I heard a cough, and I thought, ‘That sounds like Greg.’”

“Really,” I said.  “I didn’t know I had a distinct-sounding cough.”

“I’ve never thought about it before.  It’s really weird.”

“Yeah.  I would not have thought of that,”  I said.  Have a good rest of the day!”

“You too!”

Last night, I went grocery shopping, and I had to use my credit card to pay because I did not have enough cash and I forgot to bring my checkbook.  My bank had an ATM on the far side of the Memorial Union building, so I went there next.  After I withdrew cash, I turned toward the east entrance of the building near the campus store.  A guy at a table was enticing students to sign up for credit cards with free gifts.  I recognized Autumn, a freshman girl who went to Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, filling out an application on a clipboard.  I met Autumn a few months ago when I did a car rally with JCF; she got put in my group, and we failed miserably that night.

“Hey, Autumn,” I said.

Autumn looked up at me.  “Greg!” she said.  “How are you?”

“I’m good,” she said.  She finished filling out the application and handed it to the guy.  He gave her a baseball cap.  “Do you like my hat?” Autumn asked me.

“Yeah,” I said.  The cap was black, with the logo of one of the credit card companies that this man represented subtly stitched into the side.  No other writing or decoration was on the cap.

Autumn put on the cap, with her hair coming out of the hole in the back just above the strap to adjust the size; she tied her hair into a ponytail.  “I’ve never had a hat like this!” she said.  “I’m excited!”

“It looks good,” I said.  “I like it.”

“Free gifts!” the guy running the table called out to people walking by.  “This guy got two free gifts yesterday!” he said, pointing at me.

“You signed up for two credit cards yesterday?” Autumn asked.  “What free gifts did you get?

“The pen and the mug,” I said.  After I filled out those two applications yesterday, I wondered why I had done it.  I was never the type to spend money I did not own, so I did not need a credit card, although it would have been useful for an emergency, or for making large purchases without carrying around cash or a checkbook.  I had a credit card through my bank, the same one I had used at the grocery store last night, but it had a very small limit.  I had signed up for two more yesterday, but I stopped when the man with the applications, the same one who was here today, put a third application in my face.  The new cards would have much higher credit limits than the one from my bank.  In a fit of simplifying and downsizing, I canceled one of the cards about five years later, but I still have the other one, a Discover Card, today, and I use it as my primary credit card.  Also, I still pay it off every month; I know too much math to carry a balance and burden myself with impossibly high interest rates.

“So how are things?” I asked Autumn when she finished the credit card applications.

“Good,” she said.  “I like my schedule this quarter.  How about you?”

“I’m doing okay.  I’m kind of stressing over not having plans for where to live next year.”

“What are your roommates this year doing?” Autumn asked.

“I live alone.  I don’t want to live alone again.  I want to live with people.  Having roommates seems fun.  And it’s a lot less expensive.”

“Yeah.  Have you asked around JCF?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t heard anything for sure.  Pete Green and Charlie Watson were looking for a third person, but Mike Knepper got that spot before I told them for sure.”

“Bummer,” Autumn replied.  “Well, if I hear of any guys looking for a roommate, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks.  I appreciate it.  Do you know where you’re living next year?”

“Yeah.  I’ll be in south Jeromeville with Leah and two other girls she knows.”

“That’ll be nice.”

“I need to go, but it was good running into you.  I’ll see you Friday at JCF?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Bye!”

I walked into the Memorial Union building, going all the way across it to the Coffee House on the other side.  I was done for the day, weight training was my only class on Tuesdays, but I usually stayed on campus until around lunch time, to get work done.  This was a busy time of day, when finding a place to sit in the Coffee House could be difficult.  But today, I just kept running into people I knew everywhere I went, and this would provide me with a place to sit.  I saw a dark-haired girl named Lizzie sitting by herself at a table of four, putting a notebook away in her backpack.

“Hi,” I said.  “May I sit with you?”

“Hey!” Lizzie replied.  “How are you?”

I met Lizzie in the fall through a mutual friend, a math major my year named Jack who had gone to the same high school as Lizzie.  She had a class in the same classroom as our class an hour before, and Jack would always say hi to Lizzie as she was leaving class.  She became a familiar enough face that I had started saying hi to her around campus.

“I’m good,” I said.  “I’m done for the day, I only have one class on Tuesdays, but I’m going to hang out here and work on stuff for a while.”

“That sounds good.  I actually was just getting up to leave.  But you can have my table.”

“Thanks.  Have a good rest of the day!”

“I will!”

I got out my textbook for Linear Algebra Applications with the intent of working on homework, but that did not happen right away.  I had a feeling I was not going to like this class.  The professor for this class seemed a little odd.  In addition to so far just repeating things out of the book instead of actually teaching, she had told us that the entire grade would be based on unannounced quizzes.  No midterm, no final, and homework was not graded.  Something about that did not seem right, although I felt pretty confident about how I did on the first such quiz yesterday.

I then made the classic overthinker move of replaying all of this morning’s conversations in my head.  I noticed that I had not mentioned my roommate search to Skeeter or Lizzie.  I did not know Lizzie well, and I did not know anything about the guys she would know, so if my goal was not to live with strangers, I would have had no reason to tell her about that.  And, although Skeeter’s nonconformity was part of why we were friends last year in Building C, I doubted that I would want to live with the kind of crowd she ran with.  Granted, one of her roommates this year was Danielle, who had been a close friend since our first week in Building C, but Danielle had told me some stories about Skeeter as a roommate that made me wary of associating too much with her crowd.

The rest of my day went smoothly without any surprises.  I came home in the early afternoon, took a nap, and wasted time on the computer chatting on IRC and reading Usenet groups.  I went to Bible study that night, and Lillian, one of the leaders, asked at the end if people wanted to share prayer requests.

“I still haven’t found roommates or a place to live yet,” I said.

“We can pray for that,” Lillian replied.  “Anyone else?”

The others shared their prayer requests: difficult classes, an upcoming summer mission trip to Mexico, a sick friend, a friend going through a difficult time.  We went around in a circle, each person praying for the prayer request of whomever was on the left.  After that, the group would normally end, and people would either leave or stick around for a while and socialize.  This week, while people were socializing, the other leader, Shawn, approached me.  “Hey, Greg?” he said.  “I might have an answer to your prayer.”

“Yes?”

“I’m graduating, but I’m staying in Jeromeville next year for the teacher training program.  I didn’t make housing plans either, because I was waiting for some of my roommates to decide what they were doing next year.  My roommate Brian applied to medical school, but he didn’t get in anywhere, and there is only one place he hasn’t heard from yet.  He’s heard that school usually sends acceptances early, so he thinks he probably didn’t get in.  He’s now planning to stay in Jeromeville next year, applying again and working part time on staff with JCF.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And Abby has a boyfriend who is moving to Jeromeville.  You know Abby Bartlett?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, her boyfriend, his name is Josh McGraw, and he commutes to Jeromeville from his parents’ house in Oak Heights.  He wants to move to Jeromeville and not have that long drive.  I want to save money, but Josh and Brian want their own rooms, so we were thinking if we got a three-bedroom place with a master bedroom, then I could share the big room with someone.  Are you interested?”

“Sure,” I said.  “Keep me posted.”

“Definitely!  We will!  It’s hard to get all four of us able to meet in the same place at the same time, Josh has a really weird schedule, but I’ll try to get a meeting set up in the next week or two so we can work out the details.”

“Sounds good.  Thanks!”

“I was going to ask you about this tonight, I remember you asking for prayer about that last week, but I didn’t get a chance yet.  Then you prayed about it again.  It’s cool how God works like that.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “It is.”

“Just so you know, there’s still an outside chance that Brian will get accepted to that one med school, so if that happens we might have to find someone at the last minute.”

“Right.  That’s okay.”

Sharing a bedroom did not feel like an ideal situation, but most people had to endure doing that with a complete stranger during freshman year, and I had had the good fortune to avoid that.  I thought I could handle it, though, especially with someone I already knew.  Shawn seemed like a decent guy.  I did not know Brian well, but he seemed very involved with JCF socially, and if he was going to be paid to work with the group next year, living with him sounded like a promising opportunity to make more social connections within JCF.  Josh was a bit of a wild card, I had never met him, and although his girlfriend Abby seemed nice, I did not know her well.  At this point, though, I would just have to take what I could get, and this situation seemed good enough.

I drove home a little later feeling much more at peace.  I still did not have a place to live, but I had roommates, and to me that meant that the hardest part was over.  This new plan was taking shape. I was no longer alone in my search for housing.  I was not the most social or popular student in my circles of friends.  I have a history of being a bit of an outcast and a loner.  But I was starting to open up, to make friends from many different walks of life, and that finally appeared to open a door to a new home for next year that would be much more fun than this lonely studio apartment.

March 13-15, 1996. I need time to think about big decisions. (#74)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 29 Comments

I do not do well with cold weather.  Of course, compared to the rest of the United States, winter in Jeromeville is mild; the coldest winter days still have high temperatures close to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and the temperature only rarely drops below freezing at night.  But even in those mild winters, some of my extremities stay cold when the rest of my body is under multiple layers of clothing, and I have such dry skin that my hands start cracking and bleeding spontaneously.

Every winter, a brief reprieve arrives in late February or early March, which I call Fake Spring.  The weather turns beautiful, with a week or two of sunny, warm, dry days.  The many flowering trees on the University of Jeromeville campus burst into bloom, and the rest of the trees grow bright green leaves.  The weather had been so nice for the last couple weeks that I had been eating the lunch I packed while sitting outside on the Quad instead of inside the Coffee House as I usually did.   After my Abstract Mathematics class got out, I walked across the street from Wellington Hall to the Quad, searching for a place to sit.  I had walked more than halfway across the Quad when I saw my friends Taylor, Pete, and Charlie sitting on the grass; I walked up to them, waving, and Taylor waved back first.

“Hey, Greg,” he said.  “What’s up?”

“Not much,” I replied.  “Can I sit here?”

“Sure.”  Taylor and Charlie scooted apart to give me room to sit, and I sat between them.

“So where is this apartment you found for next year?” Taylor asked.

“B Street,” Pete replied.  “Right across from Bakers Square.”

“It’s a really old-looking building with six apartments,” Charlie added.  “But it’s perfect.  Just a couple blocks from campus.  We’re still looking for a third person, though.”

Finding an apartment in Jeromeville could be a daunting and stressful task.  Most property owners and apartment management companies in Jeromeville used the same lease with the same terms.  Jeromeville was a university town, and the terms of this lease were ostensibly intended to be convenient for the university students who make up the overwhelming majority of renters.  Almost all apartments in Jeromeville would go up for lease in March for a 12-month term beginning the following September.  Last year, I kept to myself most of the time while my friends were making living plans for this year, and by the time I figured out that I needed to do something, everyone I knew had plans already.  I managed to find a small studio apartment still available in April; I spent a bit more on rent than I would have ideally liked, but I made it work, with help from Mom and Dad.

I had seen enough Roommate Wanted ads around campus year-round to know that, if I was not picky, I would at least be able to find a place to live for next year.  But I really wanted to room with friends, hoping that that might give me more of a social life.  Eddie Baker from Jeromeville Christian Fellowship lived with seven other guys in a four-bedroom house.  More people from JCF lived near Eddie: Haley Channing and her roommates lived down the street, and Shawn Yang, my Bible study leader, lived around the corner with some other upperclassmen.  I had only been to their houses a combined total of maybe five times, but living with friends seemed so much better than living alone.  It was like that TV show Friends that so many of those people loved, except that unlike the TV characters, all these friends were nice people who did not make me want to punch them in the face every time they opened their mouths.  I had never actually watched Friends, but that was the impression I got from commercials.  And, although I would never say this out loud, the thought of living right down the street from Haley was definitely appealing to me too.  She was cute.

“I might be interested,” I said to Pete and Charlie.  “I don’t have a place yet for next year.”

“Sure!” Pete replied.  “Can you let us know in the next couple days?”

“I will.”  Living with Pete and Charlie would not be the same as having a huge community like Eddie and Haley and Shawn, but it would be better than living alone.  And being so close to campus would be nice as well.  I asked a few more questions about the apartment, mostly how much the rent was; I would be paying quite a bit less to share this place than I was currently for my studio apartment.

“So what’s everyone’s finals schedule look like?” Taylor asked.

“I have two in a row at the earliest two possible time slots, on the first day,” Charlie said.

“Yikes,” Pete replied.

“Still not as bad as when I had four midterms on the same day,” I said.

“I know.  That was crazy!”

“Four?” Charlie asked, incredulously.

“Yeah.  I had all my midterms on the same day.  One of the professors let me take it the day before, but I still had to take them all within twenty-four hours.”

“That’s rough.”

“My finals are pretty spread out this time,” I said.

“I have a paper due on the last day of class,” Taylor said.  “And another final that’s going to be a timed essay.”

“That’s rough,” Matt said.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye a large group of people walking down the concrete path that bisected the Quad, headed toward the library.  Someone leading the group was explaining the surroundings to the group; it appeared to be a group touring the campus, probably prospective students, just as I had done two years ago.  Something seemed familiar about the tour guide’s voice; as my brain was trying to process this, Charlie said, “Look.  It’s Haley.”

I looked up.  Haley was walking backward, leading the tour group; the familiar voice I had heard was hers.  She wore a white shirt under denim overalls.  I never knew Haley was a campus tour guide; she certainly appeared comfortable in her position, like she knew what she was doing.  “Haley!” Charlie called out, waving; the rest of us waved too.  She saw us and waved back.

“You know what would be fun?” Charlie said.  “We should go join Haley’s tour and ask silly questions.”

“Yeah!”  I replied.  “Let’s do it.”

“You wanna?”

“Sure.”

Charlie and I got up and walked to the back of the group Haley was leading across the Quad, stopping at the southwest corner.  “And this large building behind me is Shelley Library,” Haley explained.  “A few departments have their own libraries, but most of the campus collection of books and periodicals is here.  The library also features many study spaces, including an after-hours quiet room that is open 24 hours a day.  Does anyone have any questions before we continue?”

I looked at Charlie, and he raised his hand, pointing toward the oddly-shaped Social Sciences Building across the Quad from us.  “That building over there that looks like the Death Star,” he said.  “Does it actually contain a green laser that destroys planets?”

I raised my hand next and began speaking without waiting to be called on, right after Charlie finished.  “Do cows ever stampede across the campus, and if so, how hard is it to avoid stepping in poop afterward?”

Haley laughed.  “These are my friends, Greg and Charlie,” she explained to the group.  “They’re just being silly.  If you come to the University of Jeromeville, you’ll meet fun, friendly people like Greg and Charlie.”

“Yeah, you will,” I said.  “And you guys are lucky.  You got the best tour guide ever.”

“Thanks,” Haley replied.

“Have a good one,” Charlie said, waving at Haley.  “Enjoy the rest of your tour.”

“You too!  See you guys later.”

“Bye, Haley,” I said.  We turned around and walked back toward where we had been sitting with Pete and Taylor.

“So what classes do you have the rest of the day?” Charlie asked.

“English and physics,” I said.  “And one tutoring group.  What about you?”

“I’m done.  All my classes on Wednesday are in the morning.”

“That must be nice.  I’ve never had a good schedule like that.  I’ve always had classes early in the morning, and I’ve always had classes Friday afternoon.”

“That’s a bummer.”

When we arrived back to where we had been sitting, Pete said, “You guys are crazy.”

“I know,” I replied, nodding.

“What time is it?” Taylor asked.

“12:50,” I answered, looking at my watch.

“I better get going to class.”

“Me too.  But it was good seeing you guys.”

“You too,” Taylor replied

“Have a great day,” Charlie said.

“I will,” I said.  “You too.”


I finished my English paper on Thursday night.  On Friday, the sky was gray and threatening and stayed that way all day.  It did not actually rain, although it looked like it was going to.  Fake Spring had departed as suddenly as it had come.  I decided not to take chances on my bike; I took the bus to school that morning, and I drove to Jeromeville Christian Fellowship that evening, paying to park on campus.

I have never done well with big decisions.  Anything involving spending a large sum of money or a long-term commitment, I needed time to think about.  I could not make such decisions impulsively.  Usually it was not a matter of needing time to do research, or perform a cost-benefit analysis.  Sometimes this was part of it, but often I would just need time for thoughts about the decision to form, to know whether or not it felt right.  And I had a bad habit of second-guessing myself on big decisions.

Pete and Charlie needed a third person to join them in their new apartment for next year, and I needed a place to live.  I had known Pete and Charlie since the day we started at UJ, and I trusted them not to be the weird and creepy roommates that were the makings of people’s roommate horror stories.  I had no reason to keep hesitating, and after having this in the back of my mind for the last couple days, I felt ready to commit.  I would tell them tonight.

By the time I arrived at the JCF large group meeting, the music was starting.  I did not have time to talk to anyone.  I found an empty seat near the front of the room and began singing.  Cheryl, one of the JCF staff members, was doing the talk tonight.  I tried to concentrate on her talk, and on the words of the song, but I could not get out of my mind the fact that I had to talk to Pete and Charlie about next year.  That upcoming conversation weighed heavily on my mind the whole night.

After the last song and the closing prayer, I stood up nervously.  I always got like this whenever I had something important or difficult to tell someone.  I looked around the room for Pete or Charlie, and I saw them in the back of the room, talking with Taylor and Mike Knepper.  I nervously walked toward them, waiting for a chance to jump into the conversation.

“So we’re going to sign the lease tomorrow afternoon,” Pete explained.

“Sounds good,” Mike replied.  “I’ll be there.”

Oh, no.  This was not what was supposed to happen.  No one told me that I had competition, or that there would be a consequence for waiting more than two days to make a decision.  I spoke up anyway, although at this point I was pretty sure I knew the answer to my question.  “Pete?” I asked.  “Are you guys still looking for another roommate?”

“I think we just found one,” he answered.

“Oh, okay,” I said.  I stood there silently for another minute or so as the others talked, then I went back toward where I was sitting before.  I missed my chance.  I wished Pete and Charlie had told me the other day that I had a deadline.  I probably would have been more decisive, since I had been thinking all along that I would tell them yes, that I wanted to live with them.  But now they gave the remaining spot to Mike Knepper instead.  And that meant I had to start stressing about finding a place to live.  I sat down where I had been sitting earlier, staring at the wall in front of me as the worship band put their instruments away.  A few minutes later, I saw Haley walking toward me out of the corner of my eye.  I looked at her and waved, halfheartedly smiling.

“Hey, Greg,” Haley said.  “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “Mostly.  Pete and Charlie needed a third person to live with them next year, and I told them I might be interested.  I was just about to tell Pete tonight that I wanted the spot, only to find out that Mike Knepper took my spot.”

“Oooh.  That’s rough.”

“I don’t think they betrayed me on purpose.  I never committed to anything.  I just feel like they should have asked me first if someone else was interested.  We just didn’t communicate.”

“Makes sense.”

“It’s kind of my fault.  I should have committed earlier.  I hesitate and second-guess myself, and I miss out.”

“Yeah.  I know what you mean.”

“But I just can’t bring myself to make a big decision that’ll involve a year-long commitment on a whim like that.  I need time to think about it and let the decision set in my mind.”

“And that’s important.  Having the right roommates is a big deal.  One of our roommates, the one you probably don’t know, she got into a big argument with Kristina the other day.  And it was over something little.”

“Yeah.  Hopefully you guys will work that out.”

“Hey, if I happen to hear that any of the guys need another roommate for next year, I’ll let you know.  Okay?”

“That would be awesome.  Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome!  Hey, that was funny what you and Charlie did, jumping into my tour.”

“Thanks,” I said, laughing.

“Yeah.  It caught me off guard, but I needed a good laugh.”  Haley smiled, her blue eyes looking right at me, and I smiled back.  “How’s school?  Getting ready for finals?”

“Yeah.  My finals are spread out this time.”

“That’s good.  Mine are all at the end of the week.  That gives me time to study, but I can’t get any of them out of the way.”

“Good luck on those.”

“You too.  Hey, have you seen Kristina?  I need to ask her something.”

I looked around the room; I did not see Kristina.  “I don’t know where she is,” I replied.

“That’s ok.  But I need to go look for her.  You have a good weekend, okay, Greg?”

“I will.  You too.”

Haley got up to look for Kristina, and I stood up and walked around, saying hi to other people and talking about school and finals.  I honestly did not think that Pete and Charlie pulled the metaphorical rug out from under me intentionally.  They needed to find a roommate, and since I was not ready, they found someone.  But, as I had told Haley, I felt that it would have been nice if they had checked with me, since I had expressed interest.

With all of these people around, I should be able to find someone else who needed a roommate.  Bible study was not meeting this coming week because of finals, but I would mention it when we got back after spring break.  Maybe I would even ask my friends, or send an email, to let me know if they heard of anyone.  I had already told my current apartment management that I would not be renewing my lease next year, hoping that I would be able to find a place where I did not have to live alone, so the option of staying where I was no longer existed.  But there would be something out there for me.  The key, as I said before, was a willingness to not be picky.

Although I had the sense that I had no reason to feel hopeless, my missed opportunity to live with Pete and Charlie in the apartment on B Street next year hung over my head all weekend.  I was frustrated with myself for being so indecisive.  When I was applying to universities two years ago, most of them had fixed application deadlines in November and December, and when I received acceptance letters in the early spring, I had around two months to make my decision.  Of course, in this fast-paced world, everyone wanted their results immediately, and sometimes I would need to know what I wanted and go for it.  I wondered if I was missing out on any other opportunities by not acting decisively…

P.S… this week marked two years since the first episode of this blog. Happy blogiversary to me!

Mid-March 1995. I completely dropped the ball. (#30)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 15 Comments

Every Jeromeville student knows that Dr. Andrew E. Bryant is the best professor to get for general chemistry.  His students love him. He has been named Instructor of the Year. He is personable and likeable, better at interacting with students than most people who teach in a 400-seat lecture hall.  Dr. Bryant is known for pulling pranks on his class; I heard about one time on the first day of the quarter when he got some other chemistry professor to pretend like he was going to be teaching the class instead.  This other professor went over a fake syllabus that included far more difficult assignments and strict grading than any reasonable professor would have. A student who was in on the prank kept complaining that this was supposed to be Dr. Bryant’s class, getting the other students worked up.  The whole time, Dr. Bryant was sitting in the class disguised, and he revealed himself to the class about five minutes in. I wish I had been there to see that. Dr. Bryant is everyone’s favorite chemistry professor…

… in 2019.  I didn’t get to take his class, because Dr. Bryant wasn’t at UJ yet in 1995.  He started there in the early 2000s. And he wasn’t even Dr. Bryant yet in 1995; he was still an undergrad, at University of the Bay if I remember right.  Instead of getting a good professor like Dr. Bryant, I got Dr. Albrecht, who was boring and hard to understand because German appeared to be his first language.  And I was nodding off in his class today, because I was up too late last night talking on IRC with this girl named Jenny. (There’s a reason I brought up Dr. Bryant in the first place, but that’s another story for another time.)

I attempted to follow along with Dr. Albrecht’s lecture in the large lecture hall in the chemistry building.  Until this year, this was the largest lecture hall on campus; that really weird-looking concrete building that just opened this year had a larger lecture hall.  I tried to stay awake enough to take notes, but they were considerably less than legible. I became aware in my half-conscious state at one point that Dr. Albrecht was coughing.  After a few more coughs, he said, “Excuse me. I need to get a drink of water.” The sudden change in routine caused me to wake up a little, and I sat up to see Dr. Albrecht step out of the door on the side at the front of the lecture hall.

A little while after this, I heard running water and swallowing sounds.  I looked around, and people began to chuckle when they realized what was going on.  Dr. Albrecht was wearing a cordless lapel microphone, and he had forgotten to turn it off when he went to get water.  When Dr. Albrecht reappeared in the front of the classroom, the class greeted him with wild applause. I don’t know if he ever figured out that he had left his microphone on.

That was certainly the highlight of my classes that day.  The rest of the afternoon, I just did homework and studied.  At dinner time, I sat with a bunch of people from my building.  They were already there when I arrived, so I sat down in the middle of their conversation.

“So we looked at Hampton Place today,” Liz said.

“Which one is that?” Sarah asked.

“It’s behind Albertsons on Andrews and Coventry.  I like that place. It seemed nice and quiet, and it’s just a short walk to Albertsons for groceries.”

“You’d be in a two-bedroom?”

“Yeah.  They said if we give them a deposit by Friday, they’ll save two apartments for us, one right on top of the other.  Caroline and I upstairs, and Ramon and Jason downstairs.”

“That’d be a good arrangement.  Taylor, weren’t you guys looking at apartments today too?”

“Yeah,” Taylor said.  “We signed a lease at The Acacia.  That’s on Acacia Drive, not too far from where Liz was just talking about.”

“That’s you and Charlie and Pete?”

“Yeah.”

I started to get a feeling of dread as I realized what they were talking about.  They were making plans for living arrangements for next year. And all of this planning had happened while I was completely oblivious to it.  I didn’t even think about this as being something I should do right now. The next school year was over six months away. I had time. I didn’t have a roommate, and the thought of living with a roommate was kind of scary, but I surely still had other friends who would need a roommate.

 

A few days later, I got back from classes in the afternoon, went back to Building C, and checked my email from my room.  I had two messages, both of them forwarded chain letters. The first one was from Brendan upstairs, who sent a lot of forwarded chain letters and jokes; this one contained jokes about stereotypes of different universities in this area.

How many Bay students does it take to change a light bulb?
One to change the bulb, fifty-three to protest the bulb’s right to change, and twenty-six to protest the protesters.

How many Jeromeville students does it take to change a light bulb?
None, because Jeromeville doesn’t have electricity.

How many Capital State students does it take to change a light bulb?
One, and he gets five credits for it.

How many Santa Teresa students does it take to change a light bulb?
Twenty-six: one to hold the bulb, and twenty-five to throw a party and get so drunk that everything spins.

How many Walton students does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one; he holds the bulb and the world revolves around him.

How many Valley students does it take to change a light bulb?
None, because Stockdale looks better in the dark.

 

I laughed out loud at that last one.  I had visited the University of the Valley in Stockdale with my family on the same day we first visited Jeromeville, and the surrounding neighborhoods looked really trashy and sketchy.  And… Jeromeville doesn’t have electricity? What’s with that? While that is of course far from the truth, that does seem consistent with the way that urban elites in Bay City and San Tomas see the rest of the state.

The other email was from a girl named Jenny, whom I had met on IRC recently.  It wasn’t a standard chain letter, though; it was one of those things where she wanted her friends to answer questions about themselves.  Jenny answered nine questions that her friend Matt had sent her, then she forwarded the email to nine of her friends with a new nine questions for us to answer.

What is your favorite thing about Fall?
What is your go-to drink?
What favorite treat really hits the sweet spot for you?
Tell me about a favorite date or share a great date night idea.
Do you have a favorite family tradition?
What book(s) are you reading right now?
What one piece of advice would you give your younger self?
Do you have a secret or hidden talent?
What is one way you served or blessed someone else recently?

 

I hit Reply and started typing.

What is your favorite thing about Fall?
A new school year with a chance to meet girls… um, I mean new friends.

What is your go-to drink?
Coca-Cola.

What favorite treat really hits the sweet spot for you?
M&Ms.  I love those things.  I probably shouldn’t eat as many as I do.

Tell me about a favorite date or share a great date night idea.
Good question… my best date night idea is a night where I actually go on a date.  Because that pretty much doesn’t happen.

Do you have a favorite family tradition?
I don’t remember how this tradition started, but every year at Christmas, we play Trivial Pursuit.  My mom and I are both trivia buffs, and Grandpa also knows a lot of stuff, but he has the advantage of having been alive for some of the history questions.

What book(s) are you reading right now?
I just finished Forrest Gump by Winston Groom.  A lot of the details are different from the movie, but I liked it.  I loved the movie too. I just started reading It by Stephen King. My mom read this book when I was a kid, back when it was new, and I’ve heard it’s really good.

What one piece of advice would you give your younger self?
Don’t be so shy or afraid to try new things!  I made a lot of new friends senior year of high school, and if I had actually gotten out more and met them earlier, I would have had more time before we all went off to college and lost touch.

Do you have a secret or hidden talent?
I know pretty much every highway in the western United States.  My friend Sarah, when we met, she had me guess where she grew up by naming two of the highways in her city, and I did.

What is one way you served or blessed someone else recently?
Yesterday, I was walking around the Memorial Union, looking for a place to kill time between classes.  I saw my friend Tiffany from math class, and she was having a hard time understanding the homework, so I helped her.

And my nine questions for you:
Were you named after anyone or anything, or for any particular reason?
What did you eat for dinner last night?
What’s a movie, TV show, book, song, etc. that you really like that most people haven’t heard of?
If you could go visit anyone currently alive on Earth right now, for one day, and getting yourself there was no object, who would it be, and where is this person?
Where is someplace you enjoy visiting that is not a traditional tourist destination?
Which dead celebrity or historical figure do you most wish had not died?
Coke or Pepsi, or neither, and why?
What do you like on your pizza?
What would you most definitely not want to name your future child, and why?

 

I sent this message to nine friends, all people I knew from the Internet who regularly sent me this kind of stuff.  I didn’t send it to anyone from Building C, because of the time a couple months ago when Karen Francis got so mad at me for forwarding a chain email to the entire building.

I lost track of time while I was studying and doing homework, and I didn’t make it to dinner until after seven o’clock.  None of my usual friends to sit with were there. I sat by myself at a large table, but a few minutes after I sat down, I heard someone ask, “Hey Greg!  What’s up? You mind if we sit with you?” The words were spoken very quickly, so that they almost ran together.

I looked up to see Jack Chalmers, a tall guy with a year-round tan who wore shorts and sandals most of the time, including right now, even though it was only 58 degrees outside.  He was with two other guys I didn’t know. Jack grew up in a beach town that I had never heard of before this year, south of here between Santa Teresa and San Angelo, and he always talked fast.  Jack was in my math class fall quarter, and he lived in Building F.

“Sure,” I said.  “Go ahead.” Jack and his friends sat at my table.

“How’s 21C?” he asked.

“It’s going well.  I still have an A. My instructor is a grad student, and I think it’s her first time teaching.  I had to explain something to her the other day.”

“I like my class this quarter.  The professor’s hard to understand, but I can usually figure it out.  You taking 21D in the spring?”

“Yes.  It’s at 9AM somewhere in Wellington, but I don’t remember the instructor or room number.”

“I’m in that same class.  There’s only one class at 9AM.”

“That’s cool.”

“What are you doing over spring break?”

“Nothing special.  I’m going back home for the week.  One of my friends from high school wants to get together and catch up.”

“You’re from Santa Lucia, right?  Or somewhere near there?”

“Yeah.  Plumdale.”

Gesturing toward one of the other guys at the table, Jack said, “Jeremy and his girlfriend and I and someone else we know are gonna take a road trip to Santa Lucia over break.  We were just talking about the best way to get there from here. What do you think?”

Back in 1995, cars weren’t equipped with GPS, and there was no Google Maps to ask for directions.  In order to figure out how to get somewhere, you had to read a map. A map was this big piece of paper that would fold out, with diagrams of all the roads in the area.  Some people didn’t even read maps well, so they had to get directions by asking someone who was familiar with the area, although in 1995 I had no concept of the fact that some people couldn’t read maps.  But more on that later. I always had this odd fascination with maps and highways, so Jack’s question was perfect for me.

“You know how to get to San Tomas?” I asked.  “100 west to 6 south?”

“Yeah.  Should we keep going to the coast from there?”

“No.  That road always has really bad traffic.  Take 11 south to Plumdale, where I’m from, and then take 127 west.  And if you know where to look from 127, off the right side of the road you can see my high school.  There’s a big mural on the back of the gym that says ‘Tiger Country.’”

“The 127, west,” Jack repeated.  I noticed that Jack said “the 127” instead of “127” or “Highway 127.”  My friend Melissa from high school said that too. She grew up south of me, as did Jack, and this was a peculiarity of the speech pattern of people from that part of the state.   I always thought it sounded funny. In fact, in 2011 I had a girlfriend who said highway numbers with “the” in front; I made fun of her for it once, and she just glared at me. That relationship didn’t work out, although I should clarify that the highway thing was not the primary reason we broke up.

“Yes.  Just follow the signs to Santa Lucia from there.”

“That seems pretty simple,” Jack said.  “So do you know yet where you’re gonna live next year?”

I felt anxious as my brain processed what Jack had asked.  It seemed like literally everyone was talking about this, and I didn’t even know where to start.  “No,” I said.

“Do you have roommates for next year?”

“No.”

“I’ve heard places fill up fast.  You might want to get on that.”

My anxiety spiked even more.  Not only was everyone talking about this; it also seemed to be a bigger deal than I thought, even though it was only March.  “Yeah,” I said. “First, I need to figure out who to live with.”

“What’s your roommate now doing?” Jack asked.  “Would you want to live with him again?”

“I’m in a single room.”

“Hmm.”

“And most of the people I really know well already seem to have plans.”

“You can always find someone looking for a roommate.”

“I guess.  I don’t know what it would be like living with strangers, though.”

“Yeah.  I know a guy who is a junior, and he lives with people he didn’t already know.  They’re all pretty chill, but you might get someone sketchy.”

“Right.”

“Good luck, man.  Want me to tell you if I hear of anyone looking for a roommate?”

“Sure.”

To be honest, I really didn’t want to live with some friend of Jack’s whom I didn’t know.  But at this point, I didn’t know what was going to happen, and I didn’t want to be stuck being homeless.  I felt discouraged, like I had completely dropped the ball on this one.

Back in Building C, Taylor and Pete were sitting in the study lounge.  “Hey, Greg,” Taylor said as I walked into the lobby. I walked toward them.

“What are you guys up to?”

“Nothin’ much.  Just sitting.”

“I have no idea where I’m living next year.  I keep hearing everyone talking about it, and I didn’t even think about it until I overheard everyone.  Does anyone we know still need a roommate?”

“I don’t know,” Pete said.  “Most of the people I’ve talked to already have plans.  But keep asking. Plans might change.”

“And you can always find people looking for roommates,” Taylor added.  “Check the classifieds in the Daily Colt. Or just look around on bulletin boards.  I can let you know if any of our friends from church need a roommate, or anything like that.”

“Yeah.  I’m a little nervous living with strangers, though.”

“That makes sense.  But you never know. You might live with a stranger, and he’ll end up being your best friend.  None of us with roommates in Building C knew each other before this year.”

“That’s true.”

“You’ll figure something out,” Pete said.  “Start looking, but don’t stress about it.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

 

Associated Students publishes a guide to finding apartments in Jeromeville every year.  I was vaguely aware that there were stacks of these apartment guides in many of the large buildings around campus, next to the boxes that held the free copies of the Daily Colt.  I took a copy of the AS Apartment Guide the next day and started looking through it during a break between classes.

The city of Jeromeville is colloquially divided into six regions, although these six regions had no official legal status.  The oldest part of Jeromeville, between the campus and the railroad spur leading north to Woodville, is called Downtown Jeromeville.  The areas directly north of downtown and the UJ campus, but south of Coventry Boulevard, are called Central Jeromeville. West Jeromeville is west of Highway 117, North Jeromeville is north of Coventry, East Jeromeville is east of the railroad track and north of Highway 100, and South Jeromeville is south of 100, which means that it is actually southeast of downtown, but as the only part of Jeromeville south of 100, the “south” name stuck over the years.

Downtown Jeromeville was closest to campus, but it was by far the smallest of the six regions, and there were not many apartments downtown.  Central was also close to campus, and also lacking in apartments. Most of the rental properties in those areas were old houses or small apartment buildings that were rented privately by owners and not published in the AS Apartment Guide.  Larger and newer apartment complexes were scattered throughout the other four regions of Jeromeville. The Apartment Guide listed the number of apartments of each size at the complex (which did not necessarily mean that all would be available for the coming year), the monthly rent for each size of apartment, amenities offered by each apartment complex, and the nearest bus line.  The local bus system in Jeromeville is jointly operated by AS and the city, so most of the routes and schedules are very student-centered.

I noticed a large concentration of apartment complexes in a section of north Jeromeville along Alvarez Avenue and Maple Lane. One of the apartments in this area was called Las Casas Apartments; I remembered a few months ago when Mike Adams mentioned a friend who lived there, and I found the name funny because Las Casas literally means “the houses” in Spanish.  That might be a good area to look into; it wasn’t as old as the neighborhoods close to campus, and two grocery stores are nearby.

I also noticed that some apartment complexes in Jeromeville only had one- and two-bedroom apartments, and others, particularly the newer ones farther from campus, also offered three- and four-bedroom apartments.  Some also had studio apartments, which I thought meant that one room was intended to be both a living room and bedroom. One complex called Walnut Tree Apartments in west Jeromeville even had six-bedroom apartments.  As an adult, I now know that apartments this large are quite unusual in normal cities. Jeromeville has a market for large apartments, though, because most rental properties in Jeromeville are rented by groups of students living together.

I still did not know what my situation would be for roommates for next year, nor did I know how much Mom and Dad would be willing to spend on my rent, or if I would have to get a job.  And just about everyone I had asked in Building C already had roommates for next year, with many having already signed leases. The AS Apartment Guide didn’t help with that.

 

One day, during the following week, as everyone was preparing for winter quarter finals, I was doing math problems in the common room downstairs.  Jared, the weird guy from the third floor with the bushy blond hair, walked in, and I waved to him. “Hey, Greg,” Jared said, walking toward me and sitting in a chair next to me.  “Ready for finals?”

“I’m getting there.  What about you?”

“I have so much to do. I have a paper to write, and it’s due tomorrow.”

“I’m more worried about finding a place to live next year than I am about finals,” I said.  “Everyone seems to have plans already, and I had no idea any of this was going on.”

“Yeah.  This guy I’ve had classes with lives in a house just off campus, and they have an opening for next year.  So that’s where I’m going to live.”

I realized about halfway through mentioning my concern about next year’s living arrangements that maybe I shouldn’t say anything in front of Jared, because Jared might want me to live with him.  I really didn’t think I wanted to live with Jared. He was a nice guy, but a little odd. So I was a little relieved that Jared had plans for next year. “Do you know if anyone in this building still needs a roommate?” I asked.

Jared looked like he was thinking about this.  “Phuong?” he said.

“Hmm.  I haven’t talked to Phuong.”  I hadn’t talked to Phuong because the thought of having a girl roommate seemed strange and inappropriate to me.  People would get the wrong idea. And I didn’t know if I felt comfortable living in such close quarters with a girl.

“I hope you figure something out,” Jared said.  “I need to get upstairs and work on my paper.”

“Good luck,” I said as Jared got up and climbed the stairs.  A few minutes later, I went upstairs and back to my room. Later that night, after it was cheaper to call long distance, I called my parents and explained my situation.

“Don’t worry about this,” Mom said.  “We’ll find something. And like you said, the worst case scenario is you have to live with strangers.  But at least you’ll have a place to live.”

“I guess.”

“I’m sure not every apartment in Jeromeville is booked for next year already.”

“That’s not what I’m hearing people say.  Apparently everything here fills up really fast.”

“People are always moving in and moving out.  Something will be open.”

“That’s not how Jeromeville works.  According to the AS Apartment Guide, most apartments in Jeromeville use something called the ‘Jeromeville Model Lease.’  Apparently someone designed this to be student friendly, but what it means is that every apartment operates on a 12-month lease from September to August every year.”

“They can’t all do that, can they?”

“It sounds like they do.  At least most of them. It’s stupid that the city and the university think they can control the economy like that.  That’s Communism. But people like Communism in this socialist People’s Republic of Jeromeville.” Technically, apartment complexes participate in the Jeromeville Model Lease voluntarily, so it is not Communism.  If anything, it is a result of the free market; apartments use this to more easily market themselves to students, who are the overwhelming majority of Jeromeville renters. But thinking through whether or not the Jeromeville Model Lease is actually Communism is not something I wanted to do right now, since I was upset.

“And there’s no way you can be in a dorm again?” Mom asked.

“The dorms are only for freshmen.  At least, you’re only guaranteed a spot for one year.  That’s what I’ve read.”

“If you apply to be in the dorm again, is there a chance you might get in?  Is it too late to apply?”

“I’ll look into that, but I don’t know what my chances are like.”

“Could you commute?  Find an apartment somewhere else, like Woodville?  Or even Capital City. Capital City is huge; I’m sure there are lots of apartments there.  Even if it’s just temporary.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t worry about that right now.  Take care of finals first. And when you come home after finals, bring the Apartment Guide, and we’ll start to make plans.”

“I guess.  And if I have time, I’ll drive or bike past some of these places to get a better idea of what the neighborhood is like.”

“Sounds like a plan.  See, you’ll figure this out.”

“I guess.”

 

My last final was Thursday afternoon of finals week; I stuck around to unwind and talk to girls on IRC that night, and drove home Friday morning, March 24.   My finals went pretty well. I didn’t find any of them to be particularly difficult, but I still felt a little apprehensive, because I rarely thought I did well on finals.  I always feared the worst. And I also felt bad because I had completely failed at making plans for housing next year. Mom said not to worry, but I did worry, because I didn’t know what was going to happen.  I like having a plan to follow, and this wasn’t one.

But as difficult as it was, I knew that I would be able to make something work.  Maybe I would find a place of my own that wasn’t too unaffordable. I had a feeling that Mom and Dad would be willing to spend money on me, although I hated that.  Mom and Dad had made a lot of bad decisions with their money in the past, and I hated for them to have to spend more because I didn’t do my job of finding roommates.  I know I wouldn’t want that if I were ever a parent someday. I could always try to get a job next year if I felt like I needed to be contributing more.

I grabbed a tape at random and played it when I got far enough south for the Capital City radio stations to become fuzzy.  The tape was R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People album.  I took a deep breath as I tried to let the sounds of alternative pop-rock music and Michael Stipe’s strange lyrics drown out worries of not having a place to live next year.  I was unsuccessful in that.

But maybe it wasn’t all worrisome.  Maybe there was another plan in store for me.  Maybe someone I knew would have a potential roommate back out at the last minute.  Maybe I would be commuting from Woodville, or from Capital City. Maybe I would find strangers to live with, answering a roommate wanted ad or living with friends of friends whom I didn’t know personally.  And wherever I ended up next year, maybe my living situation would lead to something good that would never have happened had I lived somewhere different. One can never tell.

In hindsight, knowing how this part of my story turned out, I can definitely say that that last part is true; my living situation for sophomore year did in fact directly lead me to do something one night, which in turn led to something which changed my life forever.

 

AUTHOR’S NOTE from 2019:  Jenny, who wrote the email with all the questions to answer, is not an actual IRC friend from 1995; she is a current reader of this blog, who nominated me for another Sunshine Blogger Award.  The rules are to thank the blogger who nominated you, answer the 11 questions the blogger asked you, nominate new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions.  Thank you, Jenny!  I don’t normally nominate people for stuff like this, as I said, but if any of you reading this want to do it on your blog, go for it.  And post a link to your blog below so other people can go take a look at it.

Go check out Jenny at http://progressinbloom.com

In the story, I only answered nine questions, because two of Jenny’s questions for me refer to blogging, which didn’t exist in 1995.  So here are those answers:

How long have you been blogging for and why did you start?
I started this blog in December 2018, because I like telling stories about my past, and I’m old enough now that life is very different now than it was in 1995, which makes the stories inherently more interesting.

What makes a blog article worth sticking around for— one you truly enjoy reading?
Good question.  I would say being able to relate is a good characteristic (which also applies to books and movies and TV for me).  I’m not going to read a blog about, say, the best way to have a great one-night stand, because I won’t ever have a one-night stand.

And my 11 questions for anyone who chooses to participate:

  • Were you named after anyone or anything, or for any particular reason?
  • What did you eat for dinner last night?
  • What’s a movie, TV show, book, song, etc. that you really like that most people haven’t heard of?
  • If you could go visit anyone currently alive on Earth right now, for one day, and getting yourself there was no object, who would it be, and where is this person?
  • Where is someplace you enjoy visiting that is not a traditional tourist destination?
  • Which dead celebrity or historical figure do you most wish had not died?
  • Coke or Pepsi, or neither, and why?
  • What do you like on pizza?
  • What would you most definitely not want to name your future child, and why?
  • iPhone or Android or neither, and why?
  • What celebrity do you enjoy following on social media the most, and if you don’t follow celebrities on social media, why not?  (It’s up to you whether or not someone counts as a celebrity)