Napoleon, Meet Facebook

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?

 

Nyquil and Ibuprofen

Recently, I have been sick as a dog.  I blame my sister, who went with me on a corndog trip and bit into my corndog before handing it to me… after she was horribly infirm the previous weekend.  But that is what I love about my sister: she has no concern for my health, and she blows burps into my face.  

I started to feel really achy while in my seven hour class on Wednesday. I had no clue what was wrong with me, so I pulled a stool up to my lab bench and just tried to look pitiful. If I looked pitiful enough, maybe one of my labmates would do my lab for me and just let me die in the corner. Unfortunately enough, nobody even batted an eye and so I had to finish my lab by myself and shuffle home. I obviously needed drugs to help me out in my situation. So I when I got into my room, I pulled out my stash of drugs.

I learned to squirrel away drugs from my grandmother. She had at least one pill of every type of drug you could ever dream of in a beige, carryon bag next to her bed. To be completely honest, I wouldn’t be surprised to if she had a kilo of cocaine in the medicine bag, just in case.. . .When I was about eleven, I told my grandma that I was sick, so she gave me a breathe-right strip and five assorted pills. I questioned nothing and downed them with a liter of Cherry Coke; the next thing I know, it was 22 hours later and I had no clue where I was. Was I roofied from my grandmother? Yes.

I have developed my stash over the last couple of years and have stored everything in an old shower bag from Boy Scouts. A few pain pills from roomies’ past surgeries, cold pills, ibuprofen, aspirin; the list goes on.  So I was sure I would find relief in my medicine bag, but when I looked in it, most of my pills had been ransacked. I was left with three ibuprofen, a Claritin, and a squirt of Chloraseptic. I wasn’t too surprised because every week, a roll of quarters will go missing from my bedroom—even if I hide them. I even resorted to hiding my quarters in a zipped pocket of my winter coat, but that did nothing to hamper the thief and I was, once again, quarter-less on laundry day.

 I took the three ibuprofen and prayed that my sickness would go away after Zumba. Obviously, Zumba only exasperated my illness and by the end my tonsils were the size of grapefruits, keeping any passage of spit down my throat. I felt nearly rabid, and my cotton mouth made it look like I was foaming at the mouth. I hurried home so I could just end the day, and then my fever started.

I tried to break my fever by cocooning myself in a series of comforters, and going to sleep. I woke up at five in the morning, not in my bedroom, but on my leather couch and in my skimpies. I must have became so hot in my bedroom that I sleepwalked out to the couch, stripped, and then tried to cool down against the frigid leather. I stayed on the couch until eight when my neighbor started to knock on my door. Due to my unwell state, I opened the door for him, even though I was wearing practically nothing.

After my neighbor had left, I knew I had to get a fever reducer before I wound up outside, naked, in the sprinklers. So I went to Smith’s, and before I paid for my drugs I had already taken 1000 mgs of ibuprofen. In my drug induced state, I managed to finish my 44 page term paper, make a presentation on celiac disease, and frolic in the park.

For my presentation, I decided to wear my really snazzy, golden shoes. The problem with these shoes is that they are two sizes too small and usually make me feel like my feet have been amputated, but with the drugs surging through my system, I felt nothing (I’m positive that if somebody decided to nail my feet to the floor, I wouldn’t feel a thing either). When I got home, I took off my shoes to find that my left foot was covered in blood. Apparently, my pinky toenail was a bit sharp on one end and sliced open the toe next to it. Did I feel it? Nope. I am invincible with ibuprofen.

When I was about ready to go to bed for the night, I broke out some Nyquil that I bought earlier in the day. Nyquil has been notorious for making me feel loopier than all-get-out, and usually only works to get me to fall asleep, which was all I really wanted. Once the effects started to set in, I looked out my window to see two girls from my ward with strange llama figurines. I waved the girls in who proceeded to talk about the llamas. The figurines were about three inches tall and were made from alpaca wool, but the bizarre thing about the figurines was that their faces looked as if they were modeled after a special-ed class.  It was a train wreck, and I could not look away. I reached my threshold of the figurines after one was revealed to have an extremely hair chest, and had to go to bed.

The second night of Nyquil, my friends Ashley and Nate came over to keep me company. We chatted and after an hour, the Nyquil began to set in. Ash, brilliant as she is, decided that this would be a great time for me to take out a hair wrap that she had that was starting to turn into a dreadlock, and so she had me try to unweave this thing from her hair, while drunk, with scissors and a pen. I, personally, would never have somebody under the influence of medication, try to cut something out of my hair without actually cutting all my hair off, but she had faith that I wouldn’t accidently scalp her. Halfway through, I could no longer differentiate what was thread and what was hair, so I sent her home with half of her hair wrap unraveled.

I woke up at six in the morning, and decided to walk out to the kitchen to grab something to drink. When I reached my cupboard, I looked back to find a woman passed out on my living room floor. Due to my morning grogginess, I just stood there and tried to remember if I let this woman in, and if so, why. It hit me that it was Andrew’s girlfriend after a good minute or so… and then I remembered that I was only in my underwear. I rushed back to bed, hoping she would be gone before I had to go to Zumba.

I got up a few hours later for Zumba, and when I went out to the front room, she was still passed out on the floor; unfortunately, when I saw her this time, she was a bit exposed. My friend Tal came over to go to Zumba with me and she opened the door to the stranger. Andrew, who had now moved out to the couch, woke up and introduced Tal to the woman. “Hey. I’m Andrew, and this is my girlfriend Sammy.” Tal looked puzzled at the sleeping woman, “Oh… Hi Sammy.” Sammy never said anything back, but I assume that her drooling was the best response she could muster in her comatose state.

Spring Roomates and Vagabonds.

It’s summer term. This means that my apartment complex’s rent is cut in half and people flock to Provo for cheap housing. Each summer, I seem to get the most bizarre roommates, and this summer is no exception. At the time, I have a roommate who is very similar to Napoleon Bonaparte, a roommate who is from Finland, a roommate from Southern California, and a roommate who smokes. 

The roommate who smokes (Andrew) thinks that if he bathes himself in enough Axe nobody will ever realize that he smokes a pack a day. Apparently he doesn’t realize that Axe does nothing to cover the odor of smoke, but makes it smell like prepubescent teens who smoke. When he first moved in he confided in me that he smoked, but don’t worry because he smokes before he goes to work and changes before he comes home, so I didn’t think that it would be too much of a problem.

Andrew started to come home smelling less like tobacco and more like marijuana, and he would laze about on the couch and play Guitar Hero while eating Cheetos. I immediately told him that he reeked of pot, but he denied it and continued on with his munchies.  After his batteries died in his guitar, he decided to follow me around the apartment and try to get a conversation out of me. I, being the ice queen that I am, would give him one word answers or would text through our conversation, hoping he would catch that I wasn’t in the mood for talking. He continued to follow me around until I left the apartment to sit in the park and read.

Andrew, thinking that I am his best friend, asked me to pick up his friend (Joel) who was just kicked out of his apartment… in Colorado. I have issues telling people, “no,” so I told him I would think about it and I would get back to him. Somehow, this translated to Andrew that I would pick his friend up from Colorado and I would be doing it over the weekend. He let me know that he would pay for all the gas and that he was going to pay me for driving, but I never had intentions to go. The thought of being trapped in the cab of my truck with this high, game junkie made me want to shoot myself. I finally lied to him and told him that my sister might need a ride out to Salt Lake and that she gets priority (which is true). Joel took a Greyhound down to Provo and crashed on my couch for the night. The moment he stepped through the doors, it was like a wave of smoke crashed into our apartment. I didn’t realize he would be staying on my couch because nobody said anything to me, but that is where he stayed. 

After four days of Joel living on my couch, the apartment became nearly opaque with smoke. He and Andrew would play Guitar Hero with each other for hours with all the blinds closed, then they would go out to smoke, and then come back to play more Guitar Hero. Joel bought groceries for himself and cleared a shelf for them in our cupboards, making himself right at home. I talked to the other roommates about how they felt about our couch vagabond, and they too didn’t know he would be staying on the couch. I asked Andrew how long Joel would be staying and his response was, “You know, like til’ the middle of June. We’re gonna move in together because I gotta get outta here. Ya know?” The middle of June. I am somewhat intimidated by Andrew because he is my size and a hundred pounds heavier, so I just went to my bedroom to figure out what was going to happen to our apartment.

Andrew must have caught on to the fact that I was dissatisfied, and so he decided to ask all the roommates individually if they had a problem with Joel staying. But he managed to ask in such a way that made it seem that he would kill anyone who said they did have a problem. The roommates told Andrew that they were ok with Joel, but not for a month, and then he came up to me. “You have a problem with Joel staying here?” He tried to seem as intimidating as possible, and something in me snapped. I released my inner sassy-black-woman and told him, “Yeah! Your friend can’t stay here for a month. Your friend can’t stay here for half a month. You know what? Your friend has until Friday to get off my couch before I report him as a stowaway. And when management comes to see that we have a stowaway and they smell the smoke in this apartment, they will kick you out for smoking. So I suggest that you help him find a place to stay.” I am surprised that I didn’t finish by snapping a Z.

That night, Andrew and Joel came into the apartment completely high at midnight and decided it was the perfect time to play Guitar Hero at full blast. I came out of my bedroom and asked them to turn down the volume because I had to get up early in the morning and went back to bed. Five minutes later they had switched from Guitar Hero to sound bites from Beavis and Butthead.  I don’t do well when people disturb my beauty sleep, so once again I asked them to keep it down. This time when I went back to my room, I could hear them talking bad about me and how I was such a stick in the mud. After nearly ripping my door off the hinges, I stormed out and chewed the potheads out so badly that they decided to leave the apartment. The moment I heard them at the bottom of the stairs, I immediately locked the door, locked the windows, drew the blinds, and went to bed with my car keys and laptop hidden in my bedroom (because I wouldn’t be surprised if they stole my truck and computer, and then careened off of a mountain in pot-induced ecstasy).

The next morning, I woke up early with the urge to blast Lady Gaga and do dishes as loud as possible. Joel tried to pretend that he wasn’t affected but I could see that he was awake and bothered. I then decided to open all the windows in the house to let as much sunshine as possible. Joel let out an exasperated groan, stuck his head inside of his pillow case, and tried desperately to plug out all the noise from the kitchen by sticking assorted nuts into his ears. I kept the music playing for three hours, and then took off for class.

Later that night, Joel decided to confront me about my morning shenanigans. Mostly, he wanted to find out if I had problems with him and if I was blasting music to get him out of the house. “I was up early, and the dishes needed to be done. I listen to music when I do dishes. Sorry if it disturbed you.” He told me he was leaving the next morning at five and I would never have to see him again.

The next morning, he was gone… but all of his stuff remained. None of his groceries had been packed up, and I knew he was going to sleep on our couch again, but he probably was going to sneak in and sleep on the couch and then leave before anyone got up. So when I got back home, I decided to open the blinds and stay in the front room until he came back. Around midnight, I saw him hiding behind a tree outside, waiting for me to go to bed. I stayed up, waiting, until he came in. He smoked about three cigarettes and walked around the block four times before he just came upstairs.

The vagabond is still here. If he is still on the couch tomorrow morning, then I will report him to the manager. But I also plan on shutting off the water when he goes to get into the shower, and playing opera music in the morning.