I wouldn't be truly sane and happy without them

The summer before my freshman year, I received the packet with my rooming information and discovered that I would be living in the only double in a six-person suite in Farnam. I was psyched to be right above the laundry, but what kind of bad luck was it to end up in the only double? I had never shared a room for a prolonged period of time, and had always had my own bathroom at home, so the idea of squeezing into a tiny cubicle with a bunk-bed with a whole other person and her stuff scared me.

Things started looking up when I got a letter from Lucy, my future roommate, and later talked to her on the phone. We had a pleasant conversation and joked that the administration had stuck us in the double together because they didn't think people from New York could live with anyone else (she's from Fly Creek, I'm from the city).

When I got to school, I had one pleasant surprise and one disaster waiting for me: on the plus side, the room was far from the miniscule hole I had imagined; but my parents had already arrived and claimed one side of the room--a serious first-impression faux pas--while I had been on FOOT. Lucy arrived with her family, and I had to quickly explain that the set-up was my parents' fault, and that we could still switch if she wanted to. "Oh whatever," Lucy said casually, "It's all the same to me." I was in roommate love.

As it turned out, the roommate gods had blessed the suite as a whole. The six uf us managed to go a whole year with no more serious conflicts than the inevitable disputes about cleaning up the bathroom or spending less time on the telephone. The remarkable thing about our housing, however, was the fact that any other combination of two people in the double would have resulted in disaster.

Lucy and I went through every step of roommate life without conflict: we coordinated everything together, from room-decoration, to late-night eating habits, to all-nighters. I often had to drag her out of bed to make it to class, while she had to remind me of the appointments or meetings I would almost miss. Visitors would be shocked at the way we would feel free to take something from each other's closets, as though the whole cabinet were one big warbdrobe. At first we both tried hard to be neat, but after a few days it came out that our rooms at home had always been disaster areas, and the days of putting away clothes and books ended. Our room became the bargain basement-style mess that we were used to, although once in a while we would agree to clean up when we couldn't reach our beds through the rubble.

We did more than just tolerate each other's living styles--we became friends. Other people told horror stories about having to avoid their suites for fear of encountering their roommates. Meanwhile Lucy and I presented a danger to each other in that we could never get anything done because we always wanted to socialize. Who can work when it's more fun to eat popcorn and bitch about classes? Who has time for sleep when you're in your cozy bed with someone you want to gossipwith just on the other side of the room?

We became so addicted to each other's company, that we went so far as to volunteer to take the double in our sophomore-year suite instead of rotating the single, even though our third suitemate had lived in a single freshman year. As the two of us look forward to living in singles in the same suite this coming year, we joke that we won't be able to handle it. We will actually have to get work done when we're at our desks, our wardrobes will be cut in half,and neither of us will ever get up on time for class. And after all, it's no fun talking to yourself all night instead of going to sleep.

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