This fall, when I moved back to my parents’ house, one of my former roommates admitted to me that living together drove him crazy. Everyone knows bad roommate horror stories but I never saw myself as one. I didn’t make loud noise during odd hours, we rarely fought, the company I kept was agreeable–what was so terrible about living with me?
He said I lived and treated our house like it was temporary. I knew I was bad at cleaning, cooking and every other exercise in domesticity. But he said it was because I made no attempt to personalize the house and only when my replacement moved in did the house “finally look like someone lives here.” He made me rhetorically promise the next time I lived on my own I would live better instead of just choosing to do without.
Yes, we used the clear curtain liner our landlord gave us instead as an excuse not to buy a shower curtain. Yes, our one plastic spatula was slightly melted. And maybe there was one time I had to run to Shoppers Drug Mart bleeding to buy band-aids when I accidentally cut my finger and realized we didn’t have any. But isn’t the impoverished college student lifestyle acceptable when you are an impoverished college student? Still, he had a point.
I remembered what he said today when I was shopping for a backpack for my new laptop and to take traveling in Europe. I have a new laptop because I cracked the screen of the old one a year ago when I left it under a car seat unprotected (while the car was being driven.) Today I stood inside a backpack mecca today with a bag that met my basic requirements (reasonably priced) and one that promised more comfort for me, more safety for my computer and some fun hi-tech gizmos (what I would call indulgent) at a crossroads. It required some justification and debate, but I allowed myself the more expensive bag.
Three weeks from now I am leaving for the Netherlands to go on exchange and it will be the impoverished life once more. I will be fending for myself in foreign lands for seven months. But I am proud to have taken the first step to leaving the coddled suburban comfort I hope to outgrow the only way I know how. God bless Mastercard.
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