Today was an amazing awesome and exciting day. Though to understand the significance of today, we must go back in time just a little. Right around 2 weeks ago, Amy’s roommate decided to make a chore chart without talking to Amy about it first. An action which Amy and I both felt was a little like treating Amy like a 5 year old (we totally had a chore chart when I was a kid, doing enough chores got you stuff. I think I got a NES game for doing it once, and the chore chart Amy’s roommate made came complete with color coding and daily reminders). Obviously, Amy (and myself) were slightly offended at this action, but no one ever talked about it.
Enter today. Amy has noticed that items that belong to the roommate are slowly, but steadily, disappearing. When Amy tried to talk to her roommate the night before she got a very cold shoulder, and when we woke up this morning we found two EXTREMELY interesting things. The first was her roommate had deleted all of us off facebook. Just BAM! Gone. The second thing was her roommate had posted a craigslist add looking for someone she could move in with.
Okay, so obviously this girl has been majorly offended but rather than talking to Amy rationally and maturely, she’s going around and subversively making plans to just leave (and by extension leave Amy stuck with the bill). Well, this concerns Amy and I, and so we spend most the day attempting to contact her roommate via various methods. After about 4 hours of intermittent attempts, Amy finally gets a text message that says, “What do you want.” (note the period and not a question mark). Amy responds that she feels like she needs to talk with her roommate over the phone and not via texting. We get no response.
Finally, Amy asks me to just come over because she feels that her roommate will not be returning that evening and we want to watch the premiere of the new season of “The Office”. Shortly after I arrive (around 5ish), we finally get a very long e-mail from her roommate, not a call, just an e-mail. The gist was the roommate felt that Amy wasn’t pulling her fair share of the work around the apartment.
Now I must take a break to make a very quick side note that this apartment boarders on immaculate. Both Amy and her roommate are diligent to put away the dishes they dirty and keep the common area relatively clean. In fact, Amy is extra diligent to leave nothing of her own in the main area for prolonged periods of time out of respect. The worst you could find in that room are a couple cat toys of the roommate.
Amy again pursues peace with this kid and replies that she would love to talk with her roommate, and the roommate promises to be home early.
So Amy and I head off for free Chick-fil-a night (time is now about 5:45) where we have an awesome time. On the way out of the parking lot, we notice that there’s a lady with her car stalled out in the middle of the road. I go ahead and hop out and offer to push her car into the next parking lot (just a little down the road). I get a couple steps (slow steps, it was a VERY heavy car) and two other young men come and join me (thank goodness!). The three of us get it pushed into the parking lot and Amy and I head out.
We still got an hour and a half-ish before “The Office” comes on, and we’re expecting her roommate to get home shortly after she gets off at 6-o’clock. So we put on Wall-E and chill out.
Her roommate doesn’t show up. No sooner had "The Office" turned on then her roommate walks into the apartment (8-o’clock on the dot, way to get home early). Amy is initially turned down when she attempts to talk to her roommate, so I hide out in Amy’s room and Amy tries again. With me out of there, the roommate starts to pack-up all her dishes and silverware while Amy tries to talk with her. Amy says she can clean more and the roommate (quite angrily) replies, “Well, I guess that’s okay for now.” But the conversation doesn’t really end, Amy tries to figure out what’s going on, but the roommate refuses to actually talk. Instead she just keeps packing her stuff and giving non-committal answers.
Finally, Amy comes back into her room and begins to sob. Nothing is getting solved, it’s just escalating. I go out into the room with Amy and politely confront her roommate. I tell her that we all need to talk and try and get this peacefully resolved. To which I’m angrily told it’s doesn’t concern me.
Now of course this is completely false. For starters, this is my girlfriend we’re talking about, and further, I kinda have some long term plans with this Amy of mine, her roommate is giving every indication of splitting leaving Amy with some sever finical repercussions. The kind that can damage a credit report at a time when it really needs to be spotless. I politely tell her as much at which point she turns off in a huff, stomps into her room, slams the door in locks it shut! What are we, teenagers?!
So I begin talking to the roommate through the door. I say we really need to discuss this, that some feelings were majorly hurt and Amy wants to reconcile with her roommate. I explain that we understand that the roommate believed she was being communicative by making a chore chart, but it wasn’t true communication.
Dead silence from the room. Okay, so reconciliation is a no go, time to switch gears a little. At this point I politely explain that we really need to get it resolved because the two of them entered a contractual agreement whereby both individuals are finically obligated to the apartment. That means that if one of them leaves, and the other can not pay the full amount of the rent, then they both get evicted and it goes on BOTH credit reports.
This finally causes a huge eruption, where the roommate yells out, “Who said I’m leaving! What makes you think I’m leaving!” Though I didn’t respond to her taunt, the answer is the craigslist ad and all the packing, just an off hand thought. Regardless, I continue to try to politely reason with her and finally tell her that this isn’t how two Christian people should treat one another, that we need to reach a peaceful solution. At this point she storms out of her room with her purse. I make sure I’m not in her way, nor do I attempt to stop her. Amy and I really are attempting to open dialogue and don’t want anything misinterpreted. She storms down the stairs and opens the door. She turns around and screams “You’re not my F****** father!” slams the door, locks it and heads off. Nice.
It doesn’t end there however! Amy, at this point, is way scared. Her roommate has gone off her rocker. She’s adamantly refused our every attempt of peaceful dialogue and has begun to demonstrate acts of aggression (though fortunately, it's been limited to verbal and physical only to doors), and I’m trying to calm her down. Shortly there after, the roommate returns talking on the phone (being prompted by someone with what to say). She tells me that she wants me out, that her name is on the lease and if I make her fell threatened or uncomfortable then I have to leave.
I ask her if I have threatened her in anyway. She’s quick to respond no. I calmly and quietly let her know that Amy is also on the lease, that I am her invited guest and she needs me right now, I’m not about to leave and legally she cannot make me. She threatens to call the cops and I politely respond “You are welcome to do so.”
So she leaves again. Amy is freaking out that the cops are gonna come and sure enough, 15 minutes later we hear sirens. Humorously, however, it turns out to be an ambulance and fire truck, something happened to someone else in the apartment building next to us.
Amy and I sit down for devotions and another 15 minutes pass. There’s a knock at the door and who is it but the friendly Richardson Police. We go ahead an invite them in and explain what’s all going on. The two of them inform us that they cannot legally make me leave. Moreover, as the conversation progresses and they learn the why this argument began, the more they begin to laugh. Amy goes off with one of the police men to talk with her roommate outside while me and the other chat it up inside.
The two of us hit it off quiet nicely and more and more his jaw drops to hear about the happenings of this argument. It ends with him basically telling me that this is ridiculous, and it’s clear that he has found this whole thing to be a humorous waste of time and the roommate was crazy for calling it in.
Amy comes back in at this point and I let the officer know that we had been packing and were actually just waiting to talk with them before we left. We didn’t want the roommate calling them and then them not hearing our side of what happened. If she was going to blow all of this to an absolutely ridiculous proportion just to avoid talking with Amy, then we weren’t going to let it get us in trouble.
So Amy finished packing and as she’s coming downstairs, one of the officers runs up to her and says, “You know you don’t have to go, right?” AWESOME! The officer was completely on our side, they were really wonderful guys. I shook their hands and thank them for coming out. Amy joked with them and apologize they were brought out on something so stupid. “You know… women!” Amy told them as we left. The two of the laughed and one commented that he had two girls of his own.
Meanwhile, Amy parted pleasantly with her roommate. She asked if she was moving out, to which the other replied “Well, I pretty much have to now don’t I!” To which Amy, cool as a cucumber, replied, “I’m sorry it went down like this.”
While both Amy and I recognize that her roommate brought this down on her self (she consistently refused to talk with Amy and instead chose methods such as chore charts, secret craigslist postings, and one sentence quips as she ran out the door so no one could respond, then she continued to defend her grossly inappropriate, and un-Christ-like attitude to the point that she called the cops at a point where Amy and I were quietly watching TV in her room, sorry but she built this house of cards with her own hands one piece at a time), we don’t harbor her any ill will. We find it tragic that her roommate so consistently choose the path of immaturity, but that’s life. We’re trying to make sure that the roommate can get out of the lease as quickly as possible since she has non-stop made it clear that she she no longer wants to live there anymore. And we’re praying that matures past this self-destructing attitude that is, quiet frankly, inappropriate for a 22 year old.
And that’s my incredibly AWESOME Richardson Adventure!
My AWESOME Richardson Adventure
