Blong?

I was just reading Karla's blong.

Okay, I meant to type "Karla's blog," but I'm going to leave that typo intact. What Karla writes is so much better than a blog, it deserves that extra letter. Please, if you aren't already doing it, read Karla's blong here.

Anyway, what I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, was that Karla was talking (typing) about when she lived with 4 guys in college. This inspired me to tell you of the time I lived with 4 guys in college.

Um... 5 guys. I mean I was a guy. I mean I am a guy. I mean, I'm a dude, and I lived with 4 other dudes. In college. But not in a gay way.

Karla was recounting the horrors of living with 4 smelly, frat-boy types who lived in squalor. My story is different because I lived with 4 clean-cut, intelligent, scholar types who took their work very seriously, studied a lot, and lived in squalor.

These were: a genius physicist, a global economics major, a future doctor, and a guy who was triple majoring in math, economics and finance. You're picturing revenge of the nerds. Admit it. But they weren't nerds. They were good looking guys, smart guys posessing that nerd-killing one-two punch of girlfriends and social skills. If anything, I was the nerd.

Oh my god. I was the nerd. I'm going to stop typing for a second here and sob uncontrollably.

----sob!-----

Okay, I'm back. I didn't really sob uncontrollably. The giveaway is that people who are sobbing uncontrollably don't take the time to type "----sob!-----." Sheesh.

So these guys, these future MD's and PHD's who could balance the global budget, harness the power of the sun to cure cancer and all that? Apparantly you can only force all that info into your brain if you sacrifice little things like "doing dishes," and "how the ice tray works," and "how to put the fucking lid back on the mayonaise jar instead of leaving it on the counter for a week to see what kind of nasty mold you get."

I don't mind a little mess. Sally will tell you, if you ask her, (and tell you repeatedly if you keep buying her beers) that I am not what you would call "fastidiously neat." You probably couldn't even get away with calling me "tidy." Don't misunderstand me, I don't roll around in my own filth or shit the bed on a regular basis (notice I added "on a regular basis..." Heh heh...) but do I mind a little tiny bit of squalor? No sir and/or madam, no I do not.

I do however, mind the fact that living with these 4 guys changed me. It changed me into something that no self-respecting man would ever want to be. What did it change me into? Well, somewhere between chasing my housemates around with the vaccum cleaner and lecturing them on how exactly to fill a fucking ice cube tray, it hit me: It changed me into my mother.

Un-for-fucking-givable!!! Let me say right here and now that I love my mother, and that she's a wonderful woman to whom I owe a great many things, but loving her doesn't mean I wanted to be her. I wanted to be a slobby lazy 20-year-old. And yet... Take 4 less-than-sanitary braniacs, add a horrible, creeping, nausiating smell eminating from one corner of the kitchen, and what do you get? Me, lecturing my buddies at every turn on how if they would just, for 5 minutes, make the smallest effort, we could all live in a happier and healthier environment. "Would it kill you to wash a dish?" "That trash isn't going to take itself out!" "I'm not your personal maid, you know..." Then I would grumble as I cleaned their dirty dishes, stacked them neatly on the shelf, and thought "One day they'll apreciate all I do for them..."

When did I become the clean one??? Sometimes at night, lying in bed, I pick my nose. And sometimes, if there's no kleenex around, I just flick whatever I find out into the darkness of the bedroom. Does that sound like the guy that would become the "take out the garbage" Nazi???

(perhaps I should have kept that nose-picking story to myself... Sally reads this blog. Oh well...)

At any rate, after a semester and a half of this, one of my housemates started dating this girl... She was really sweet and pretty and I believe she had actually been "Miss Nicaragua" at some point. Suddenly whenever I came home I would find her vaccuming our house, or doing our dishes. It seemed like she was constantly cleaning the place. I felt lousy about it because I was afraid that my housemate, who was not exactly the most enlightened guy when it came to women, was making her do it. Every time I saw her cleaning I would tell her she really really didn't have to do it, but she would just smile and say she wanted to.

I am going to hell for many, many reasons, but one of those reasons has got to be that I let Miss Nicaragua clean my house. But god-damn if that place didn't shine once she came along.

Yep. Going to hell.

Going to hell, and to add insult to injury, I was the nerd. You learn the craziest shit about yourself writing these blongs.

Next time, class, I'll continue to beat the English language into the ground, and we'll discuss my obsessive over-use of commas, elipses... (and parenthetical statements.) Also italics.