Birthday

Watch the video first and then I’ll explain. (For some reason blogger won't let me post this video.)

       In our household the birthday tradition is invite friends over late at night, turn off all the lights, and present the birthday cake. Specifically, my birthday is on Halloween, and I kind of make it a big deal since the holiday overshadows my birthday. When I turned twenty-two, my roommates were joking about throwing a pie in my face. I took the threat seriously and acted paranoid throughout the day. I stared behind my shoulder, ran away from friends, and kept telling them, “No cake in the face, don’t hurt me.” In the end, begging my roommates not to attack me only encouraged them to plot a birthday prank against me. What you do not see in the video was all my roommates dog piling onto me. When I saw the birthday cake I let my guard down, and you know the rest. Whip cream taste good, but smells awful. I had to wash my hair two times that night and once more the next morning. 

        On March, I got my revenge against the roommate who threw whip cream in my face. Sadly, we had no whip cream in the house, so I improvised by smearing thick frosting all over my his face. Sadly, the end result was lame compared to my whip cream facial. To this day my birthday remains unforgettable. On a side note, the person singing “Silent Night” is Joe.

House War

           Our houses occasionally attack one another with nerf guns, and one night the neighbors launched a surprise invasion. One of the invaders documented this attack and made a fake trailer.

  

          The night started off with Joe and I fencing with cheap foam sticks. We stopped fooling around when we heard someone crawling through the kitchen window. Joe walked into the kitchen and I heard him scream. Before I could react the front was kicked open and the neighbors charged into the living room. The person who filmed the attack, JT, shot me and ran upstairs. I followed JT and grappled him into a headlock. Fred, Joe (He somehow escaped the living room siege), and I threw JT into our room and took him hostage. Joe and I held JT hostage for about twenty minutes, while Fred guarded the front door. Eventually, we freed JT because he lost his phone. When he found his phone he recorded minor skirmishes.Essentially, JT recorded the battle preparation and the post-battle, but he did not record the actual nerf war. The very next day Fred sent out an email to everyone in the house that says, “In light of last night’s raid, please arm yourself at all times.”

Lamps

 My roommates and I can act pretty rowdy at night. Specifically, we like playing with nerf swords. Occasionally, Joe and I challenge each other to nerf fencing in the living room. 

 When the two of us duel nothing bad happens because Joe and I can control how fast or strong we swing. However, when other people duel they swing their swords furiously. For example, one night Joe and Fred duel each other, and Joe grabbed a tall lamp to defend himself. Joe swung around the lamp and snapped it in half with a kick. As the lamp snapped sparks literally flew into the air, people watching the fight ran towards Joe to help him up and to put out a potential fire. In the end, Fred scolded Joe for using the lamp as a weapon, and everyone had to contribute paying for a new living room lamp. 
             A month after the duel Fred bought two new lamps for the living room. Joe and I were busy cleaning up the kitchen, while Fred and my housemate Scott were setting up the new lights. I heard Scott say, “Oh these lamps are nice. I hope they last us for the rest of the year.” Unfortunately, three minutes later I hear glass shatter and Scott screaming “no” for thirty seconds. Turns out Fred knocked over the lamp top which leaves nothing to shield the light bulbs brightness. My house became infamous for breaking furniture, and I guess we cannot be trusted with new lights for five minutes.

Cornbread

During the Jell-O making the neighbors next door were baking cornbread. (Just to clarify for future blog post, I currently live with six other roommates, and our next door neighbors are our friends who also have six people living together. We treat the two houses as one since Parkmerced’s largest townhouse is too small to fit thirteen people.) One person became infamous for ruining the cornbread. The instructions told him to add one table spoon of salt, but he misread the measurements and added one cup of salt. During the potluck people were anxious to try the cornbread because it smelled so good. However, once people took a bite out of the cornbread they immediately tasted only salt. Everyone taste then spat the cornbread out of their mouths like crashing dominoes.

A week later, the neighbor who ruined the cornbread tried and failed to redeem himself. He ruined his second batch  by substituting salt with baking soda. Joe sampled the new cornbread, and he quickly spat it out. When Fred saw the cornbread in the trash he asked, “Hey. Who threw away the cornbread? We don’t waste food in this house.” Joe replied with a scream, “Don’t eat the cornbread! It’s super bland. It’s poison!”

Eventually, my neighbor successfully made edible cornbread after his fifth attempt. Yes, he failed two more times making it a grand total of four failed attempts to bake cornbread.

Random Cooking Failures

One day Fred threw a left over Costco hot dog in the microwave to eat. As the microwave heated the hot dog I saw sparks flashing inside the microwave because Fred forgot to take out the foil. I panicked. All I did was stand next to the microwave, shouting "fire," and pointing at the flaming hot dog. I could have just opened the microwave door and everything would be fine. Instead, Fred ran across the room and pulled his hot dog out. To this day everyone makes fun of me for shouting fire while standing next to a potential fire.

 One night my roommates made Jell-O for a potluck. One of my roommates, Lincoln, poured the Jell-O on to an aluminum tray, but as he poured Jell-O the liquid never rose. It turned out the aluminum tray had a hole in the bottom, and the Jell-O leaked out. Lincoln cleaned up the leaked Jell-O on the counter with a rag while other roommates transferred the rest of the Jell-O onto a clean tray. Afterward, someone jokingly told Lincoln to squeeze the Jell-O from the rag on to the clean tray. So Lincoln squeezed the dirty rag juice onto the Jell-O, therefore contaminating the whole dessert. Fred screamed and told Lincoln to never do that again. Everyone was then forced to make Jell-O all over again.

Snoring

  I cannot write a blog about roommates without mentioning myself because no one can ever be a perfect roommate. The biggest issue living with me is my snoring. I have heard horror stories about my snoring for the past three years, and I think I can confidently say I snore louder than screaming. My snoring constantly wakes people up at night. In fact, I occasionally wake myself up. My roommate, Fred, usually kicks my bed, or lifts my blanket to stop my snoring. Unfortunately, I wake up whenever he bothers me, and then I go back to snoring within a minute. One morning I snored so loud I woke up my entire house:

Roommate 1: Oh, man. What is that loud roar?

Roommate 2: That would be D.

Roommate 1: Oh. Oh! How can Fred sleep at night?

 When I wake up:

Me: Oh. My throat hurts. Did I wake anyone up?

Roommate 1 (screaming from his room): Yeah. You woke me up.

All my roommates, past and present, have experienced my loud snoring. I usually give them a head start at sleeping, but I still wake them up. I think my snoring is hereditary because I do not think my family suffers from sleep apnea, and only they can snore as loud as me.

Midnight Snack

One night Joe, my three other roommates, and I gathered around the dining table and shared muffins we had received from neighbors. Around midnight we started cleaning up, but Joe did something that made the night unforgettable:

Joe: Hey guys, you know what I like most about muffins?

Everyone: What?

Joe: You get to do this.

Joe picks up the paper muffin wrapper, rolls up into a ball, and eats it.

As Joe smiled, chewing on the paper, our jaws literally dropped. Everyone just paused and stared at Joe chewing and spitting out chunks of paper. When people started leaving the dining room, I purposefully teased Joe and left the extra muffin wrappers for him to eat. I turned my head for a second, and then I hear a loud gulp. Next thing I see is Joe walking up the stairs chewing on another paper muffin cup.

More recently, Joe, two different roommates, and I were just hanging around doing work at the dining table. On the table was a bag of Hershey’s Kisses chocolates. Joe ate one piece and wrapped the foil into a small ball. He balanced the foil on his knuckles, and when he made a fist the foil would fly up and hit somebody. Meanwhile, I was busy writing my mock script for class (yes it was my script for BECA 470 last semester), but Joe kept flicking the foil ball at my face. It soon became too difficult to concentrate on writing. I finally gave up when Joe flicked the foil into the air and swallowed it. Joe went into shock and he started choking. Any one of us would have helped him get the ball out, but we were all too busy laughing. I fell from my chair laughing hysterically, to the point of crying. When he spat the foil ball out it took me five minutes to calm down. In the end, I never made any progress on my script because I was too exhausted from laughing.