I hate pickles.

Last year three friends and I got into the Merrill apartments, and we were given a random fifth to fill out the house. The person we ended up getting would change our entire quarter, if not our college career on a whole. A small and quiet man, he was 9-10 years our senior, and it turns out we already had a history of sorts. He had freaked out a girl on my hall by following her in the dining hall, she would talk about how he would make small talk and come on to her, playing with her keys and whatnot, despite the number of times she would drop that she had a boyfriend. He eventually stopped, but the legend had started. Hoping that we wouldn’t see this side of him, we tried to interact and include him, to no good result. He would fall in love with every girl who came to my house, and later after meeting them would come up to us and say “Hey… umm, you know _____? Do you… like her? She’s really nice. Does she have like, you know, a boyfriend? No? Could you maybe… umm tell her that I like her?” But the discomfort didn’t stop there, his way of being friendly was to constantly offer a bevy of phallic food, and only phallic food: “Hey wanna pickle?” or “Anybody want some sausage?” and of course “Hey, there’s a popsicle in the freezer if anyone wants it.” Because of him my roommate and I made sure the door was locked every night before we went to bed, anticipating the night that he would knife everyone in the house. When he finally moved out (though he only went next door), we were relieved to an extent, but another unexpected perk was that for some strange reason the amount of toilet paper we were going though halved, which may have explained the half hour trips to the bathroom he’d take. Moral of the story: Don’t fuck around when filling out roommate applications.

Merlin Jones