Dorm Horrors

That's when no one would blame you for walking out and yelling shut the fuck up at the top of your lungs.

NastyHobbitses wrote:

people would gather to loudly yell about how "SOOOOOO WASTED" they were

Ugh, yeah, one night in student housing I was kept up for hours listening to some asshole in a heated argument with a decorative tree. When the dipshit and his friends were kicked out a month later (lots of drugs) my roommies were sooooo upset because they were sooooo much fun.

And earplugs are for losers.

Hoo, boy. I actually graduated from college in May (and now I have my own place, thankfully with very thick walls), but the revival of this thread brought some final-semester memories rushing back.

This past January, I busted my ankle on our Iowa ice. The weather was foul, I could barely even stand, and eventually I spent the best part of two months stuck in my dorm. Felt more like two years, though, thanks to my next-door neighbors.

Allegedly, it was just two people--Japanese exchange students--but there was never a night when I heard fewer than four voices. The only wall long enough and clear enough for my bed to be put against was the one I shared with this dorm, and every night, there would be an obscenely loud party that vibrated right through my wall. They had no idea of moderation, volume control, or "SHUT THE FUCK UP, GODDAMMIT!"

I mentioned my ankle because, as I say, I was trapped in my room. I'd never broken any bones before, or even sprained anything, and twenty-two isn't a good age to have to relearn how to walk. If I wanted to ask them to keep it down, I'd have to roll myself and my big plaster cast off the bed or out of the wheelchair (which could only fit through my door with a great deal of shoving and scraping), collect my crutches, and haul my pathetic ass out the door. Three times as hard when you're on powerful painkillers. I did this an average of four times an evening, asking as politely as I could if they could please turn the music and the screaming down. They never did. Ever. Even the RAs could only get them to be quiet for a few minutes. I honestly have no idea why they weren't thrown out of the building.

Forget long dark nights of the soul. Some of my worst nights have been spent lying on my bed, too drugged up to get up and complain but unable to sleep due to ear-bleeding levels of Lady Gaga and Japanese shrieking.

Also, if there is any justice in the world, I will someday get my hands on the sonofabitch who pulled the fire alarm three times in a single night. A single February night in Iowa, no less. Hopping on crutches down several lonnggg flights of stairs at 2 AM, freezing your butt off on the concrete outside while waiting for the firemen to arrive, hopping back up once they cleared the building and then doing it all again half an hour later? Now whyever would that make me a wee bit testy?

We're at the end of the first quarter, and I'm no longer at the point where I constantly want to beat the other people in the complex about the head and shoulders. I think people are too tired cramming for finals to start shit anymore. When I applied for placement in this building (a cross between apartments and dorms), I was told this was grad student housing. It's not--it's second-year undergrad and above. There are about three grad students here.

The rest could be refugees from a local zoo, for all the noise and asininity going on around here earlier. I'm across from the pool, and it's not uncommon for people to slam the metal gate in the middle of the night as they run around shrieking and giggling. I'm also convinced that my neighbors above me are in a constant state of conflict; they spent a lot of time slamming doors and storming around above my head. For nine freaking weeks it's been like that. Plus the drunken stupidity as people stagger down the corridor. Shouting, running, laughing, walking into walls and fences. Seriously--middle of the night, I hear "HAhahaha *thunk* hahahahaa." Yeah. Only the best and brightest here.

The apartment itself isn't too bad. The vents spew out stuff that's making me sick, there's this weird particulate matter that settles on things in my kitchen, and none of the stove burners are level (I hate cooking soup), but otherwise, it's okay.

The free entertainment when I do laundry is priceless, though. Twice now, I've been waiting for my stuff to finish, when these three students (2 men, 1 woman) come in with this huuuuuge amount of laundry. They take up almost the entire laundry area sorting and no fewer than seven washers at a go. The woman, girlfriend to one of the others, inevitably starts in on her boyfriend, scolding him at full volume--last time, it was how cheap he was for not evening out an overloaded machine and running an almost empty one. She'd shout that he was "Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!," and the second guy would antagonize her further by echoing with "Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!" She'd get angrier and less intelligible (thick accent and getting thicker), and it always ends up being more interesting than whatever I'm working on.

UC Riverside: Come for the education, stay for Angry Girlfriend Laundry Room Theatre!