Thoughtful Thursdays: Regarding Roommates

I was thinking the other day just how much my life has changed since 2001 - the year I graduated high school and began college. Soon after starting college, I kind of went potluck and moved into a house with two girls who I didn't know very well. We paid $100 a month in rent and didn't have cable or central air conditioning, but damn if we didn't have the time of our lives. We had free reign from our landlord to do whatever we wanted to the house.

So naturally, we painted the kitchen electric blue, tiled the kitchen counter tops with free scrap tile from the tile store, and I papermached the dining room chandelier. I stenciled the wall in my bedroom and we built a hammock on the front screened in porch so big that we had to leave it there when we moved out because we'd have to either a) demolish the 20 foot hammock with a handsaw, or b) do some major front porch renovation.

The same group of boys would come roll our house every single Saturday night (I'm not even kidding) and we'd get yelled at by the church attendees across the street every single Sunday morning. It was a riot and all we could do was apologize and clean up the dang toilet paper. (I mean EVERY SINGLE SATURDAY NIGHT.)

We shot squirrels in the attic with a bb gun.
We shared countless cups of coffee while "studying" at the downtown coffee shop.
We watched the same movies over and over and over and over and over again. And never tired of them.
We met each other's families.
We took care of each other's nose bleeds.
We had long talks, sipping hot tea, sitting on the kitchen floor.
We straightened (and consequently fried) the hair of the one who had some pretty luscious curls, pre-straightening.
We got mad at each other about the 2 week old disgusting dishes in the sink.
We danced in the kitchen into the early morning hours.
We threw '80's parties and charged cover.
We paid for 3 round trip plane tickets to New York City from said '80's party cover charges.
We got snowed in while in NYC and had to stay an extra 2 days.
We learned a whole whole lot from each other.

I've gone through 8, count 'em, 8! roommates since those days in the hundred dollar house with the squirrels in the attic and electric blue walls. I adapt to each one and they adapt to me, I guess. Each one leaving a bit of themselves with me and I with them. But I don't know, there was just something about that house, those girls who still have a big piece of my heart. No one else has compared, really.

Bethany and Adrianne made lasting impressions on me; ones that I will not easily forget. We've each gone our separate ways now: Bethany, well, all over the place, Adrianne married with two children in the Park District. But I know for each of us those years on 23rd Avenue in the hundred dollar house will live on for quite some time.