The Finn has left the apartment, moving downstairs where they never have plumbing issues, and while he really did nothing but sit on the couch in his garments and Snuggie, watch Glee, and eat raw pasta, the absence of his sane presence has made the rest of the apartment go insane. While Dustin (the Southern Californian) has stayed nearly the same, Andrew (the smoking roommate) has now quit smoking for his girlfriend and is now starting to attend church, and Shon (the Napoleon) has decided to jump on my last nerve like it’s a trampoline. Actually, Shon has always done that, but now I don’t have the Finn to complain to and joke with, so now I have no pressure release valve.
Shon had been my neighbor for the last couple of semesters, and all I knew was that he spelled his name weird and had a pair of stilts. I had always been cordial to him, although whenever he would cross my path, I would think, “That is the stupidest way to spell Shon. What were his parents thinking?” Growing up, my grandma warned us about giving your child weird names. Apparently, she had a cousin or a relative who was named Beaky. Beaky, tormented by her name, ran away and nobody ever saw her again. I always imagined that she ran away to the circus to join a freak show, but I really doubt that happened. Shon has a weird name… maybe he will run away to the circus. He already has stilts.
I didn’t know that Shon had moved into my apartment until after he had been there for a week. I was vacationing in Texas with a friend, and when I came back to Provo, I walked into the apartment to find him standing in the hallway in his garments. Most definitely jet lagged, I checked the apartment number to see if I came in the right apartment, and I was home… with a strange, little man living in my apartment.
I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth when I saw that the tub looked like it was filled with smoke. I walked over to the brim, looked into the opaque broth, and realized, “The tub is filled to the brim with old shower water.” Apparently, the tub had been this way for four days. Nobody bothered to report the issue, because why would they when I will do it? The next morning, I had to bail water from the tub and then shower in six inches of my roommates shower water.
Shon is an animal of instinct, and his instincts tell him that he must throw away as many things as he possibly can or he will die. So Shon will go about the apartment, on the prowl for things that may be garbage, and when he finds something he deems trash, he picks it up, brings it to me and asks, “Is this yours?” If I say yes, his response is, “Can I throw it away?” If I say no, his response is, “Can I throw it away?”
His compulsive trashing started out small (a plate here, a cup there), but has now moved on to anything in the apartment that isn’t his. At one point, he picks up my blender from the kitchen countertop and asks, “Is this yours?” Actually it is my friend’s who is in India, but I responded yes. “Can I throw it away?” At that point I snapped. “Why would you throw out a perfectly good blender? It isn’t dirty and it takes up four inches on the counter. Why do you think it should be thrown away?” He looked at the blender for a moment, turned it around in his hands, “Is it broken?” No Shon, it isn’t broken. Why he thinks I would keep a broken blender is past me.
The internet is my favorite way to torture Shon because he honestly believes that if he has a facebook, he will be stalked and anything he has ever done will be shared with the world, but he decided to make a profile to publicize his Birthday party. His profile consisted of one picture, his name, and nothing else (no wall, no friends, and no tagged pictures). I, being a lover of facebook, decided to Google his name and then casually throw information I found at him in conversation to prove that he already had no privacy, so why not do more on facebook? I started out small: pole vaulting records, marathon times, middle names, past apartments. Then, one day, I hit the mother lode. “So, Shon, remember March 24, 2008? I do. You were at the University of Utah and you signed a petition to end pornography… I think you were signer 59. Tell me, did the pornography ever stop?” Through peer-pressure, I was able to get him to get a facebook wall. Uncertain how to use it, he asked me to post information about his party in his status. I agreed and wrote, “Hi, I’m Shon and I am paranoid of being facebook stalked!” He immediately deleted the post and wrote something about his party. Finally, I had found his weakness, and I would utilize it to the fullest.
The Napoleon is my nickname for Shon. After one of his many trashing binges, I wrote on my facebook that I was living with a new-age version of Napoleon Bonaparte because he is short and is attempting to conquer my apartment. He laughed hysterically when he read it, but that is because he thought I was talking about Napoleon Dynamite. “No. Napoleon Bonaparte. You know, the tiny, French Emperor? He tried to invade Russia . . . any bells?” He was absolutely clueless. How a Graduate student could go his entire life without hearing about Napoleon baffles me, so I had to give him a history lesson with the help of Wikipedia.
After Shon asked to borrow an athletic jersey from my sister, I promptly went to his facebook wall and wrote, “Shon wears women’s clothing.” Within ten minutes, the post was deleted. I responded by putting another wall post of, “Shon is a party pooper,” which my friend, Ash, fueled the fire by commenting, “I hear he also wears women’s clothing!” That post was deleted as well. “Shon refers to his underwear as panties. This is the manliest way to refer to your underwear.” Deleted. And then he blocked me from facebook.
Shon did at one point refer to his underwear as panties. Apparently, he has five million siblings and most of them are girls. When laundry day would come around, clean socks would go into a box and clean underwear would go into a box. Due to the overwhelming amount of women in his family, the underwear box was referred to as the “Panty Box.” So growing up, he thought his underwear were panties because, “Panties go into the panty box.”
Put into text, I sound ruthless, and I am. I feel no remorse mostly because Brodericks do two things really well: we win and we tease. So Shon can continue to be an annoying, little snot, and I will continue to cyberbully him (and while I am blocked from his facebook, I do know his login information for his LDS dating service. HUZZAH!). It’s all in fun right?
