Eighteen and Gassy

A few months after my eighteenth birthday I set off for college, to live, for nine months, with a person I knew not at all, in a room so tiny we could have used a bathmat as a floor rug. But we didn't, like all the new freshman we went out that first week to buy a carpet remnant, a dark green AstroTurf looking thing that served as our living area floor cover. To that we added posters and photographs, covering all walls with brightly colored images of high school friends, Winterskol competitions and hometown city views. There were two beds placed at an angle, with a large dresser placed tightly in the corner. On top of that we piled a stereo, too high for me to reach. On the other wall were two desks, one used as the "applying center", the other as a drop off point for clothes, books, food, garbage, wet towels, coats and dirty laundry. In between we wedged a small refrigerator, purchased by my father in response to a phone call where I lamented my lot being stuck out in "western Kansas with nothing", when in actuality I was about 60 miles from the Missouri state line. We covered it's white surface with stickers from Egg Roll King, our favorite fast food Chinese spot. Once we tried to fry an egg in our popcorn popper, huge mess, lots of smoke, a completely unsuccessful experiment. When we actually used the thing to make popcorn, we burned at least half of the kernels. We shared a bathroom down the hall with about 30 other strangers, where you were expected to yell "flush" in case anyone was in the shower and would be, had they not moved out of the way, washed with a 5 second spray of scalding water when the toilet was fired off. There was a resident advisor who watched over us, security guards at the door, and bars on our windows. Boys were not allowed on the floor at night, and meals were provided, albeit disgustingly, in the large cafeteria downstairs. There was not, and oh how we could have used this, anyone to help clean our 10 by 10 foot room. And so the mess accumulated until at last we could no longer walk through the small space and then we would clean, or rather, pick up. It took all of the day, with numerous distractions, ending with a triumphant trip to Egg Roll King and two new stickers for the refrigerator.

We were 18, left on our own, somewhat, and behaving appropriately as two 18 year old quasi adults would do in this situation.

Our current neighbors downstairs are 18, three roommates who live in what once was a beautiful apartment owned by a family of five. Last summer they moved to Europe and the college students moved in. We don't see them often, keeping to themselves with closed windows and doors, moving around at night, escaping during the day to open the door to the pizza delivery man. This weekend they were out of town, we assumed, as the car in the garage space was gone both day and night. Saturday morning the woman upstairs smelled gas. We sniffed around, called the gas company and they found a small leak in the third floor stove. Problem resolved. Sunday afternoon when we came home from a day of costume wearing about the neighborhood we were greeted with a gas smell so strong that we immediately marched the bumblebee, the ladybug and the beagle to the front porch while we investigated. In no time my head ached and I moved to the porch as well. Jack called the gas company. We waited outside, not carving pumpkins or baking apple pies as we had planned, thankful that Sunday's weather was not the freezing rain of the last week.

Jack and the Gas Man made their way into the college hall downstairs and found the stove on, no flame, gas pouring into the apartment as it had been doing since Friday when they left town for the weekend. We were one small spark away from complete disaster. Her army of cats survived, grateful was I that none of them smoked. Doors and windows were opened, the air so thick with gas fumes it was nauseating. We left, taking the girls to dinner in hopes that an hour away would sufficiently clear our apartment in time for bed.

The roommates were home when we returned, doors and windows closed, shades drawn, back to the reclusive cave in which they live. My year of living dangerously was spent many years ago in a tiny room with a good friend and a multi functional popcorn popper; I'm not ready to relive that time, wonderful as it may have been.