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During my senior year in college, I shared half a double with three other women. One was very cool. We shared each other's clothes and food and never fought over the remote.

The other female usually spent her time with her do-nothing boyfriend.

The remaining female, well...here goes.

The first thing she did upon moving in was to put a padlock on her door. Uh-oh. Those who can't trust can't be trusted. So we ALL put padlocks on our doors. Soon after, she accused me of stealing/drinking her chocolate Quik mix. So she proceeded to move all of her stuff into her locked bedroom in the attic. Whatever, Miss Anti-Social.

Once, upon returning back to the house after going home for the weekend, I find that the heat is turned up to 80 degrees in our poorly-insulated, oil-heated house. All the lights are on as well. I go up to the second floor and discover the bathroom window open. I proceed to question Miss A-S about it, as she is the ONLY one there. She comes out of her bedroom, wearing shorts and sporting a fake-n-bake electric beach tan. AARGH! Screaming ensued. We ended up going a month without heating oil during a particularly cold winter in College Town USA.

The kicker though:
We had a 12 month lease. I sublet my room for the summer term to someone and took off back home for the summer. My cool roommate calls to say that Miss A-S (okay, JAMIE) moved out, ran up a huge phone bill (in the cool roommates name) and left the place a mess. The cool roommate had to wait tables all summer to pay the enormous phone bill. We all ended up paying extra in rent.

Paybacks are a b*tch.

Now I'm not proud of this but...
At the end of the summer, my father drove me back there to retrieve my belongings. I discover upon arrival that one of the cane chairs I had refurbished went missing. Also, among the pile of empty pizza boxes and wine bottles, Jamie had also left a big pile of cat feces.

It just so happens, that during the summer I worked for a large student loan processing center. I was able to discern, accidently of course, the location of said Jamie's new apartment. Also got her social security number and a list of all the classes she was taking.

After my father helped me load the car, I asked him to drive me somewhere. He knew what I was up to all right and never said a word.

We get there, and I found her apartment. I had a nice helping of moldy tunafish she left in the fridge along with some of the cat poop. I am sure her neighbors, with whom she shared a hallway with, wondered why there was a pile of putrid food and feces left in front of her door.

After that, it was to a phone booth I went, a wry smile on my face. I dialed a number and got "Thank you for using the _____-State Telephone Registration System. Please enter your student identification number." Done. "Press 1 to add a class. Press 2 to delete". Hmm. Let's delete that class she needs for her journalism degree and add, oh, I don't know, how bout Heat Transfer 417? I still laugh at the thought of her running around campus (which is HUGE) back and forth to her advisor and waiting in line at the registrar to clear it up.

When I got home, I called my cool room-mate and told her about the events. Her response was "Wow. That's really cool that your Dad drove you".

A few years after college, I was still in the little studio I moved into after school. My mother would often tell me I should get a room mate and get a bigger place.
Why? All the extra money I would have saved on sharing the rent would have ended up paying for a weekly therapy appointment.