Text #3: The Dumb Roommate
(i) Source:
Contributor: Molly Fagan
Informant(s): Akilah R. and Kinsey H.
Semester/Year: Spring, 2021
IU Bloomington
(ii) Text:
MF: So, I heard you mention this earlier, and it made me curious. Who’s Becky?
KH: Okay, yes! I love this one. So, um, both of us decided to get an apartment together a couple years ago, but it was a three-bedroom apartment, so we needed one more person. So we asked around a little, and she just kinda showed up via a mutual friend. I actually don’t remember exactly.
AR: Me either.
KH: Haha, well anyway we were like, okay, sure, she sounds nice. And she really was, but…[smiling at Akilah].
AR: [inaudible comment drowned out by laughter]
MF: Yeah? Haha I can tell this is going to be good!
KH: Basically this girl, she didn’t know how to do anything, and I mean anything. Like, c’mon at 22 you should be able, you should know how to do things like laundry and stuff.
AR: She wasn’t rich or anything, I think it’s just that her mama did everything for her. Or I don’t know, it was like, beyond that. Bless her heart, that girl…
KH: Anyway, basically we lost the bathroom mat within the first week of moving in.
MF: Oh no!
KH: We kept laundry stuff in there, and bleach was one of those things. I don’t know how, but she spilled some on the rug. She became known for dropping things. Anyway, she thought that, oh my god, [laughs] that she could get it out by drying it, so instead of drying it like a normal person, Becky goes over, turns on the stove, and lays it on top…
MF: What the heck?!
KH: Yeah, really! So neither of us saw her actually do this, but were hanging out in the other room and we just smelled this really bad burning, melted plastic smell.
AR: It was disgusting! We ran in there thinking one of us forgot to turn the oven off, but no, there’s the bathroom mat, just lying stretched out on top of the stove. We knew it was neither of us, so it had to be Becky. We yelled for her and she had been in the bathroom so she didn’t realize the bottom of the rug had melted yet.
KH: I was honestly pretty pissed because I had bought that with my OWN money, so I knocked on the door really hard, and I know I must have cussed at some point. So she comes out, all upset, and then she smells the burnt smell too and freaks out and wants to see it. We asked her why she thought doing that would work. [laughing] Like, why?! And she said she knew bleach could stain stuff and figured she couldn’t just get it out with a paper towel or something, and she thought, she thought she could EVAPORATE BLEACH from the carpet!
MF: No way, that’s hilarious!
AR: Haha, well that was just the first of many fuck ups to come. There were so many, and they were so dumb, she basically became a legend in our little group. We even told other people, like a lot. How could you not? We weren’t being mean or anything, it was just the truth, so we called her “Becky” instead of her real name.
MF: I have to ask…why Becky?
AR: We honestly just thought it was funny, like just sounded kind of funny. No big reason other than that.
MF: What else did she do?
KH: Ooo, tell the one about the peppers. Oh my god, it still makes my throat hurt just thinking about it [laughs].
AR: Oh yeah, I feel like we all got like, lung cancer from it or something.
MF: Umm…
AR: Haha, yeah so she decides she wants to make some kind of Mexican food, like chicken with chile peppers, or chili powder or something. I just know it involved some form of peppers.
KH: It was chile peppers.
AR: I think it was both! But yeah, so of course she’s trying to sauté or cook them some other wrong way, and of course she like gets distracted or something and they start burning. It was basically chemical warfare, because that smoke burned so bad. Oh man! We were all choking and crying and trying to open up all the windows and the front door. Our neighbors probably thought we were crazy!
KH: Last time we ever let her in that kitchen unsupervised. Luckily she mostly just microwaved stuff. Oh, but do you remember the freezer?
AR: Oh my god, yes, I almost forgot! So we would kind of buy food for the “house,” so like we’d buy some butter, or a jug of milk or something that any one of us could use. Wellllll…
KH: Oh my god! [laughing]
AR: Yeah, well I wanted to make breakfast, and so I was looking for the eggs. I was thinking that I swear, I was just at the store, right? I gave up on finding them and just assumed they got used, so I check out the freezer to see if there’s anything else good in there, and freaking guess what? That girl, she put the eggs into the freezer!
MF: No way, no one’s that clueless, right?
KH: Yes way! Akilah came running over to show me and even though it wasted our money, we were dying laughing. Who does that? Turns out when we asked her she thought it was like a lazy, shortcut way to make hardboiled eggs. I’m not freaking kidding! She also liked to get fast food a lot, and sometimes she would put it in the freezer to save it. Why would you think that was good? A good idea?
MF: I haven’t laughed this much in a while! Did she do anything else? I just know she did.
AR: Hmm…let me think. Kinsey, can you think of anything?
KH: Umm…yes, sorry, there’s so many little weird things it’s actually kinda hard to think of them all. She had this really weird like, fear almost? Of using the can opener, so she pretty much only ever used cans that had pull tabs on the top. I really don’t know why, and I never asked her [laughing].
AR: There were other things, but mostly they were small little things. Like she asked us how to wash grapes one day? I think she was freaking out because they were falling off the stem all over the place, so she thought she was doing it wrong.
MF: No way, you have to be pulling my leg!
KH: Haha, well we actually do that to a lot to people. I swear that the things we’ve already said are true though, but I’ll admit we’ve definitely added on stuff to the “Becky mythos.”Like even though we haven’t lived together for a hot minute, we’re still talking about her. She’s like our mascot or something.
AR: Oh, I just thought of two more things, sorry. Umm so yeah, we definitely had a laundry disaster that made it a little awkward between all of us. Basically some clothes were lost because Becky, being Becky, didn’t always know how laundry worked, so we called it “Laundrygate” because everyone got really mad and it was a big deal. We made some rules about laundry after that [laughing].
MF: Oh I love that!
AR: The other thing was just small, but I thought it was hilarious at the time. I think it was one of those things where you had to be there. Anyway it was before spring break so we were all leaving to go back home, so like, we were all packing of course, and I was just minding my business when Becky comes in and asks how to pack a suitcase.
KH: You never told me that!
AR: I totally did, you just forgot haha. Well so maybe she just wanted to know how to pack a suitcase better? Like there are ways of getting more stuff in, but I think it was because she just straight up didn’t know. I swear, it really happened.
MF: Wow, I really wish I could have met her! You guys mentioned, I think it was Kinsey, that you guys have added on some stuff to the stories. Like made some stuff up?
KH: Yeah, we totally have, because we like to see people’s faces when we tell even crazier Becky stories. So like she’s an inside joke, so basically any time one of us has a blonde moment, we call it a “Becky moment.”
AR: Sometimes it’s like, wow, she just pulled a Becky! Or that was a total Becky move!
MF: Okay I have to start using this.
AR: Yeah so some of the stuff we made up to get good stories for parties…umm, let me think.
KH: Oh, well we say things like that she forgot to put the peanut butter into peanut butter cookies, or bananas into the banana bread, or like trying to use the toilet plunger the opposite way, like stick down.
AR: Haha, yeah or that she’s managed to burn water or thought that Africa was a country. I don’t know, it’s kinda like blonde jokes. Like, I know we’ve made it into kind of a, I don’t know, a small legend, but it’s still based on real life.
KH: Yeah, you really can’t make up the bathroom rug disaster! I miss her sometimes though because she definitely made life more…interesting.
AR: So you’re saying I should take over for Becky and break out the bleach?
KH: Haha, no, no, no we definitely don’t need any more of that!
AR: Alright, fiiiiiine, and yeah, we can’t forget her. Gone but definitely not forgotten!
(iii) Texture:
Much like their previous story, the close friendship between Akilah and Kinsey is highly evident, perhaps even more so here. Unlike the “Talking Joe” story, this story was told in a uniformly humorous, upbeat way, and both speakers were incredibly lively and interactive. The individual “Becky stories” they tell are descriptive, with both girls using words to paint a picture of each event. In her telling of the story about the chile pepper debacle, Akilah lets the audience know that it was a dramatic event, comparing it to chemical warfare and the smoke’s effect on their respiratory tracts to lung cancer; using colorful language and comparisons like this helps to engage the listener, and it makes the tale more memorable. They tell at least the first 50% of the “Becky stories” here as true, but they openly admit that the other 50% largely consist of embellishments. Despite this admission, they still tell all of their stories as though they’re true, and because of this they seem to derive enjoyment from the ambiguity they have created. I’m still not exactly sure if all of the “true” stories they told me were true, but I’ll have to take their word for it. “Laundrygate” is an interesting bit of wordplay that implies that the clothing-related disaster was quite the scandal. They delight in trying to impress their audiences with more and more ridiculous additions to Becky’s behavior, and their lengthy pauses and dramatic recreations of the scenes in their stories make them particularly vivid.
(iv) Context:
Who created/performed the text- Akilah R. and Kinsey H.
Members of the audience- Myself
Location/timing- Griffy Lake, spring semester 2021
As mentioned above, Akilah and Kinsey both graduated from IU in 2019, and while they do currently share an apartment together, they no longer live with “Becky” (she moved out of state). Despite having gone their separate ways, they still tell stories about her to each other in the form of jokes and more “formal” tellings at parties or anytime something happened to remind them of her. When I asked them how they all actually got along, they said that despite the disasters that occurred, they all parted on good terms and generally got on well. They didn’t feel that they were being unfair to her with their jokes, and she seemed to take them in stride (or at least the ones she was aware of). I’m sure this is debatable, for who wants to be known as the quintessential “dumb roommate?” But it seems that not too much harm was done, and they never told “Becky stories” out of malice or to get revenge on her, but purely for entertainment purposes. However their social dynamics worked out, I have no doubt that they would have happily told me those stories anywhere I could have chosen to interview them.
(v) Interpretation:
As a college student, and often through your early twenties, you are likely going to end up with a less than ideal living situation, or most dreaded of all, have a problematic roommate. Roommates can be all different sorts of problematic, but in the case of “Becky,” she was on the benign end of the scale when it came to her personality and intentions, but at the clueless end of the scale when it came to basic life skills. This would normally be a problem that the individual would have to deal with by themselves, but that problem easily expands outward to include roommates simply because everyone lives in relatively close proximity. So if you have a roommate who doesn’t realize that you shouldn’t mix bleach with other cleaning products, or how to do their own laundry, or cook without burning down the place, their problem becomes yours. Akilah and Kinsey seemed to have made the most of the many ridiculous (and perhaps incredulous) events that occurred during their time with “Becky.” Clearly, these sorts of living situations have the potential to result in recurring conflicts and frustration, but if you’re the storytelling sort you can at least get a good tale in exchange for a melted bathroom mat. Sharing stories about your ridiculously dirty or “dumb” roommate with other students can be a great bonding, quasi-therapeutic experience because you can vent your mutual frustrations, and most importantly, laugh about them. Humor is often pointed to as a coping mechanism, and perhaps this is true in the case of “terrible roommate stories.” Telling “Becky stories” is also socially advantageous for Akilah and Kinsey because they get people to gather around and laugh at their old misfortunes and at the legendary, and yet relatable figure, “Becky.” Funny stories are a great way to make new friends, but it is also wise to keep in mind that “dumb” roommates might not feel the same way. All too often humorous stories are at their most bountiful when they have a poor unfortunate to feed on, and this seems to have occurred here to some degree. Ultimately, the two friends created what they call a “Becky mythos,” so they have an entire world of stories to draw from and add to, all about someone who has become more like a legendary figure than a person.