Socks and Sandals

At the risk of serious repercussions, I'm going to write the tale of living with my roommate, Tom. Tom let me know that he would be irritated if I used any instances or occurances in the apartment as fodder for my blog if they involved him. So, with respect to my roommate Tom's wishes, I will refer to my roomate as Salvador, to protect Tom's privacy. All the events in this blog will be attibuted to my fictitious roomie, Sal, and any similarity to Tom and the ridiculous shit he pulls around the house is purely coincidental, and in no way reflects on Tom, my actual roommate.

First, are there even two "M's" in roommate. It doesn't look quite right, but roomate looks really odd... ironically roomie appears normal, yet makes me sound like I'm a sophomore at the kind of college that would accept a candidate such as myself.

The thing is this...I genuinely like Tom, er... "Sal". The guy is a good guy, I mean that. But we posess opposite personalities. Further, he is so nice, and so gullible that it actually whets my appetite for being a tool. I often intend to be a nice guy, but the opportunities for victimizing him are so abundant and sometime appear in such rapid succession that I am like an alkie that wants to stay sober in his heart, but lives in a tent in the middle of a brewery and works as a bartender at the local topless pub.

We have many differences which challenge me. I like to clean stuff up, clear it out, get rid of it if it's not being used. Sal likes to collect everything. The less intrinsic value it has, the better. If there is not one chance in a thousand that something will ever be of any use whatsoever, Sal wants to keep it, preferrably someplace in the open, like a coffee table in a common area or the kitchen counter. That saves misusing the kitchen counter for silly activities like cutting up fruit or veggies. If there is a space open which is big enough to place a cereal bowl, something has gone terribly awry.

That space should be filled with...something, anything. An empty yogurt container, receipts from Burger King. Yeah...receipts from a movie last september or a trip to a McDonald's in 2003 are not uncommon. I could almost understand this, but the guy has never balanced his checkbook in his life and guesses at how much $$ he has in his account.

(Editor's note: after eading this blog, Tom sent me an Im which said, "fu... movie receipts are potentially valuable")

Okay... I can try my best to mind my own business and ignore things that don't affect me. But sometimes, he goes over the line and brings entire neighborhoods down with him. Last weekend
Sal, (who sometimes calls himself Tom) was headed out the door on a beautiful, sunny 87 degree day... wearing black dress socks inside his Birkenstocks.

Pull your shorts up to your ribcage, don't wash a dish for a month, leave laundry all over the front room- no problem, and feel free to leave trash on the kitchen floor a foot from the trash can, if you're game- forget to pay the electric bill if you get the chance, but for the love of God, some things are blasphemous beyond where even Christ Himself can forgive.

I begged Tom (who earlier in this blog was identified as "Sal" for some reason) not to leave the house like that. At first I was gentle, "dude... do you really want to wear black dress socks pulled up to your knees with shorts?"

I wasnt sure whether I had a sober blackout and wound up in Sarasota or there was an influx of German tourists in the apartment.

Salvator-Tommy snubs me and parades out into the street.

Moments later, I get a call from our neighbor, Mrs. Scarpelli. Apparently, a realtor had spied Tom cruising the neighborhood like an aimless Octoberfest seeker and the poor woman's property value had dropped $9,000 in half an hour.

Next I heard an irritating, scrapescrapescrape on the pavement in front of the house. Elderly houligans had somehow gotten the idea that it was okay to play shuffleboard right in the middle of the road.

"This has to stop," I thought.

When Tommy/Sal got home, I pleaded with him to lose the socks. I tried to be helpful, forwarding him a page so he could see the harsh reality of what he was doing to himself, but my sincere attempts to save this dude fell on deaf ears.

http://www.sandalandsoxer.co.uk/home.htm