Roommate Management: (Gracias Amigo!) There were two things I knew about the Royal Couple, the first being that the Prince’s family wasn’t really that rich. La Mesa was pretty middle class at that time, and ASU’s out-of-state tuition was cheaper than California’s in-state tuition. One day the little ferret stomped in, shot me a glare, then spent the rest of the evening humming what might have been Echo and the Bunnymen to himself until the princess arrived and they laid there and made really strange cooing sounds; it was then I realized ASU’s tuition may have also been cheaper than a residential treatment facility. The other thing I knew was that the Princess bleached her blonde, as she left pieces of evidence during their anti-climatic evenings (he was still using that same box of “enhanced” Trojans!) on MY bath towel. If you guessed “So he ended up wearing them to class in his straight blond hair and handed them in stuck to his assignments?”…Bingo! My knowledge of her true hair color could also be used as a psychological nuke (the Princess loved to watch the male natives by the pool, which made the Prince very, very insecure), but in the back of my mind I heard Jiminy Cricket singing “Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide”, so I filed that stratagem in my back pocket…just in case. I was taking courses like Film Studies (on the Bohemian west side) and Organic Chemistry (on the analytic east side)….I had found balance, and for the first time I found school engaging and fun. The problem was that I was sharing living space with a pair of Stop Sign People: Life is going along great, then “POP!” there they are, the Stop Sign People…time to hit the brakes! While the Prince was not sizable enough or bright enough to pose any kind of credible threat, his confrontational demeanor was annoying and the Princess’s root-canal-like personality was a total mood-kill; if I wanted to enjoy the company of the friendly natives, I had to do it somewhere other than my own digs. I will admit that a management scheme involving Thorazine (a.k.a “The Liquid Lobotomy”) laced treats may have been considered. It offered the purely theoretical benefits of being readily available in big uncontrolled dropper bottles in the 5th Floor Nurse’s station, and would allow the Royal Couple to be easily stored in a corner or closet so I could enjoy my homework in peace. The plan had the disadvantage of me having to make sure they shuffled to and from the right classes, and making sure they don’t step out into the traffic on Apache Boulevard…Jiminy Cricket had won again. I was still trying to formulate a long term management strategy when the miracle came in October, 1988. One day I came back from an interesting class on cinematography and the world had changed. The Prince was not his normal confrontational self; in fact he was quite passive and almost fearful. I figured it was some royal virus, and he’d be back to his normal malignant self soon, but the phenomena persisted. Even better, the princess stopped coming over all together…they apparently found somewhere else to make their strange cooing noises. It turns out that it was my best bud, Jose M., from the Skill Center that came through like a champ. I had related my roommate woes to him at a Guns n’ Roses concert about a week earlier. Jose came by the room while I was at class and flashed his County Hospital credentials and announced to the Royal Couple that he was my parole officer, and was stopping by to make sure I wasn’t making any unlawful advances toward the Prince. It worked beautifully, and I was finally at peace in my own digs. The best part?...The Prince moved out at the end of the semester, and was replaced by an A-OK Air Guard airman named Marco from Miami Beach, who showed us a Florida spring break that only a Florida local could. Muchos Gracias Jose!
Posted on: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 15:10:55 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015