The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

One of the facts of life at a university is that you might have a great relationship with your roommates, or you might have a terrible one. For that, American University has this thing called the Roommate Agreement. And I’m sure that it’s very important, and in many cases, necessary. Fortunately, I don’t fall into that camp, as my roommate (his name is Marco Panessa, he’s from New York) and I have gotten along positively swimmingly.

Nevertheless, a Roommate Agreement is required to be filled out, signed by both of us, and turned in to our RA (Resident Assistant) upon completion, and then reviewed again within the next two weeks. (We thought about saying that we’d review it every 35 minutes, but that idea didn’t last too long.) And to make it weirder, that thing is quite cheesy, with tables for “pre-agreement planning,” three pages of “guided discussion to have with your roommate,” and then a list of pre-determined things for which you should establish a policy with your roommate, if you choose to. Of course the policy part is open-ended to you.

After laughing at the cheesiness of the process, we set out to “hash out” our Roommate Agreement, but found that we just couldn’t stay very serious doing it. And then when we got to the last two lines, where the policy for us to determine was a fill-in-the-blank, we just HAD to exploit that for all that it’s worth.

So here it is, after an hour of thoughtful writing and absolute cracking up to the point where we almost stopped breathing: our Roommate Agreement.

Roommate Agreement
Roommates: Douglas Bell and Marco Panessa

On the issue of noise in the room, we have agreed that there will be quiet when we’re sleeping. Otherwise, we’ll make use of alternate study/hangout spaces to accommodate.

On the issue of studying in the room, we have agreed that we will simply read what I just wrote above. How Zen is that???

On the issue of guests in the room, we don’t have a formal agreement, but the following are never allowed in our room: arsonists, serial killers, and zookeepers.

On the issue of cleanliness in the room, we have agreed that it will be possible to walk on the floor without risk of injury, either physical or psychological.

On the issue of sharing personal property, we don’t have a formal agreement, but we’ll try to make our communal contributions in our room (mainly in the fridge) roughly equal. Otherwise, anarchy might result.

On the issue of a zombie apocalypse, we have agreed that if one of us is transformed into a flesh-eating zombie, the other has the right to set the zombie on fire and will call the RA for help.

On the issue of a catastrophic worldwide coffee shortage, we have agreed that for the continued safety of ALL mankind, Douglas must immobilize Marco in a locked cell and notify the Army, the Marines, and the RA.

In the interest of context for the last line, Marco is pretty much a coffee-holic. As opposed to me, who might have some decaf once in awhile (with a lot of added cream and sugar at that), or else a hot cocoa.

In all seriousness, we pretty much figured out that we don’t have any major issues with each other in terms of noise habits, cleanliness, sharing of property (or fridge food) or anything like that. And besides, if we ever do have a major disagreement, all we gotta do is start reading this thing aloud and you can bet that the disagreement won’t last much longer.