New Roomie

I thought I’d share this news with family, friends and even strangers at the same time: I’ve got a new roommate!
I can’t tell you his name because, the truth is, that I haven’t met him yet. But I know he’s here. The signs are obvious.
The way that I know he’s here is that I keep finding things in the oddest places, and I’m quite confident I’ve not put them there. This is also why I’m assuming the roommate is a “he”; women are far too organized to put things in the crazy places he has been using.
Lately, he’s been turning on lights that I know I have turned off. One day recently, he very obviously took my keys out of my pocketbook and put them back in the door, where they stayed overnight. Sometimes, when I’m in a hurry and searching frantically for my keys, he secretly gets them and puts them in my left hand. Since I’m right-handed, I know that I would not be holding my keys in my left hand on my own.
One day last week, he drank the last diet Coke in the house, so I didn’t have one the next morning. Since I don’t drink coffee and diet Coke is my sole source of caffeine and alertness in the mornings, this was disastrous. And I’ll tell him so when I see him.
Another time he put a diet Coke in the freezer – and left it there. Yes, it exploded.
This morning he really messed things up. He put my clean clothes in the washing machine. The way I realized this was that the washing machine was covering a load of clothes with soapy water; when I walked into my bedroom, the pile of dirty clothes was right in the middle of the floor. Someone put the clean clothes in the machine; he had to be the culprit.
Another day he forgot to flush the toilet. Horrors!
He constantly moves things so that I can’t find them: mail, scissors, pens, even my shoes on occasion.
If only I could get him to take out the trash!

- copyright 2008 - Sherry Shealy Martschink