Memory Mondays ... Blast from the Past Vol.3 The Roommate...

---- Originally distributed 30 October 2001 ----

Hello,

It is good to be back in the seat writing to you all again. It took a while to write this one because of lack of material, but I think that it has all come together. In this issue we will take a look at the roommate.....

The Roommate.

The Pot:

Those of you who are new to the list do not know that I hate one of my roommates. He is not very socially acclimated and just plain pisses me off most of the time. Well it all started with raisins. He has these raisins from Iran that he eats that look like little yellow roaches. I asked him where he got them and he said “my mom sent them to me”, so I was like ok. The problem is the damn things were all in my sofa and I asked him not to eat on the sofa anymore so he has been pissed at me and Jim ever since. What bothers me about this guy is that he has a horrible voice, in fact he sounds just like Grover from Sesame Street with a slight Middle Eastern accent. I will say this much, he is scared of me after the other day. In the past few weeks he has broken a glass (no big deal), burned one of my pots blacker than James Brown, and refuses to fill the water filter jug. We will start with the pot. He cooks this Iranny shit that smells like feet and Ben Gay everyday. It really never bothered me until Jim (the cool roomie) came to me asking where his pots were. I was like, “shit I dunno, they are not my pots”. So Jim was like “I will ask Ali.”, well it goes without saying that the Mexican in Jim came out like a FOOL. Apparently, Ali threw away the pots of Jim’s after he burned them, but never said anything to Jim about it until Jim asked him. Well this is where the drama ensues. Jim started cursing in Spanish and I was sitting there on the sofa eating popcorn and watching like I was at the movies. It was okay until Jim who is about 5’4” started to push Ali who is about 6’2”, at this point I was laughing but knew I had to be the ambassador of peace in this situation. So I am standing between the two with my popcorn and laughing. So Ali knocks the popcorn out of my hand and kinda nudges me out of the way. TICK TICK BOOM!! The room fell quiet and I turned to Ali who was walking toward the kitchen and I noticed my pot on the stove. I said, “uh Ali, you cooking in my pot?” He said, “uh yeah!!” but in that kinda way like why in the hell you asking me your dumbass you can see it is your pot. So I say, “just don’t burn anything”. He say “okay” and all is well. Well about 20 minutes go by and the Iranny cuisine is burning like a the South in the Civil War. I can smell it in my room (1 floor up). As I descend down to the kitchen I see him scurrying to get the shit out of the pot, only one problem. It is burned on to my shit. Now those of you who can remember the motto that I had in college and subsequently when I lived in Dallas, “you are welcome to come over, just don’t jack with the shit is all” Well Ali had jacked with my shit and at this point I was only slightly pissed.

As I asked Ali about the pot he said, “what is the big deal it will wash out”. “True”, I said, “but you have no respect for other peoples shit so you clean it and replace Jim’s pots too.” Ali says, “you are ridiculous they are just pots YOU ALL CAN BUY NEW ONES.” Now Jim is downstairs and he is looking at me like, you gonna let him talk to you like that. Reminiscent of Sprint PCS, all I really heard was “YOU ALL” and not much else. SO, I was like (in my most ghetto sophisticated way) “you all, who the hell is you all. I aint you all, Jim aint you all. You(with finger pointing and a pause), YOU ‘you all’. We don’t eat that nasty smelling shit, ‘you all’ do. ‘You all’ the one that has got the whole damn house smelling like the damn Gaza Strip that is ‘you all’. So ‘you all’ can clean my pot, ‘you all’ can buy Jim a pot, and as far as I am concerned ‘you all' can kiss my black ass.” Well Ali kinda looked startled and stepped back. So Jim and I both thought it was about to be on, so I looked at him, like he was a visitor at church you know that --“what, what you gonna do now, what”-- look. All he said was he was going to think about it. Well that set me off again. I said, “You all don’t have much to think about” (now as I am talking he is walking over to his sofa and slams a book on the top of my tv as he is about to say something), “‘I’ do not have to buy you or Jim a damn thing”, at this point it is "Showtime at U Street" and I am ready to get with it. I said “you, you, you gonna do what?”. Now those of you who are not black or who have never been around black mothers do not quite understand the significance of the repeat. When you have something repeated to you by your mother you are in trouble, so I was hoping Ali knew the significance. Well he does not. He responded by saying, “ I said, (first mistake lies therein you never repeat to a black person what you just said by starting off “I said”, and he said it much like the 7 year old female cousin rolling her eyes) I will think about it.” Well Jim jumps in and says well you are obligated to blah blah blah, a whole bunch of lawyer yaya (Jim is an attorney). I was "Jim, like bump that shit". I don’t care what he is “obligated to do, i am telling him what he is going to do”. At this point I come to him with some ghetto reasoning. I say “Ali, this is all I have to say you don’t clean my pot and you don’t buy Jim new pots if you want to.” Now there is that phrase “if you want to” now when some tells you “if you want to” you usually don’t want to. So nonetheless, he noticed how pissed I was and he went off to his room. I told Jim that he would replace the pots and not to worry. Sure enough the next night there were new pots and he cleaned mine. Shit he does not know I will call the DOJ on his ass, and say I found some American hate letters in his room.