Urban Thought Collective

Like it or not, we’re in a recession, and perhaps the only thing that is keeping us from being in the middle of something more dire is our reluctance to use the “D” word. It seems that every time I turn on the news some financial expert is making suggestions as to how you can save a buck as you ride out the storm. These suggestions run the gamut from the common sense to the “a-HA!” that actually moves me to make a change even if I’m not going to see an immediate return. One particular idea that I keep hearing over and over again is the one about getting a roommate.

Oh sure, this makes perfect sense on paper. My income minus the mortgage payment equals not a lot left at the end of the month. However, my income plus your income make that mortgage a whole lot less daunting. I’m all for saving a buck and tightening the belt wherever possible, but the roommate thing gets about as much consideration as filling in for Roy opposite Siegfried in the show with the tiger would. NONE. I could probably come up with a million excuses as to why I won’t be getting a roommate (my place is too small, there’s only one parking space in the garage, I might have to put dishes in the lower cabinets so other people could reach them…), but the main thing that will keep me from getting a roommate are the experiences I’ve already had.

I’ve grown accustomed to the solitude that comes with living alone. Having a roommate puts that in jeopardy. On those rare Saturdays that one of my kids does not have an early game, it’s nice to be able to sleep in and not have to be awakened by the rustlings of someone else. I had a roommate in college that liked to do his laundry at 7am on Saturday morning. No big deal, right? It’s not like the laundry machines were in our room. What made it bad was his insistence on counting his quarters for laundry by first dumping them out on his desk, and then dropping them back in his change jar one by one. This sparked more than a few altercations.

Then of course, there’s the issue of company. Having that extra person around can really make entertaining overnight guests a challenge. Oh sure, you can set up an intricate system of signs and signals that alert your roomie on how to proceed, but if they fail to execute the agreed upon course of action without military precision, you can really have quite the snafu. Like the time when a former roommate walked past me in the hall bathroom while I was shaving, and proceeded to venture into my room to look for something of his that he thought might be in my room. No, brotha man didn’t ask if I’d seen it, or even if he could venture through my closed door to start his search. It wasn’t until I heard the shriek of shear horror come from the young lady with half a sheet scarcely covering only parts of her left side that I realized what had happened. Somehow, “My bad” didn’t manage to make the situation any better.

On the flip side of that, who among us has never come home from a long day, barely able to keep your eyes open, only to find that ribbon or rubber band on the doorknob letting you know that you better get lost for another couple of hours (or minutes, whichever is applicable) until the coast is clear? Even worse, in those situations where your place was big enough to have a living room or some other place to sit and wait while enjoying the sounds of the slow jam tape that your roommate borrowed from you, you had to endure somebody else’s additions to the soundtrack while you tried unsuccessfully to get comfortable, folding yourself like an accordion on a sofa upon which only a toddler could reasonably lay down.

Okay, it’s confession time. I wasn’t always the model roommate either. When one of my roommates would get fabulous care packages from his mama back in the Big Easy and opted not to share with either myself or our other roomie, we took matters into our own hands, often going through great pains to make sure that the amount of pralines in the can always looked the same. I even rolled up some paper towels to prop them up from the bottom one time. He owed us though. We were not only roommates but teammates. (Come to think of it, maybe that’s why he didn’t share, probably mad about us failing to convert on some of his assists or something).

Brother Barack, please lead us out of this financial mire because I don’t want to relapse back to my praline pilfering ways. I’m not cut out for roommates anymore. I’ll save my nickels. I promise.

Destah Owens is a single father of two from Northern California and proud UCLA Bruin who travels the world for his job as a computer engineer. His blog, “Soufflés in Saigon,” is exclusive to Urban Thought Collective.