Things I’ve witnessed flatmates do that have both concerned and left an impression on me
Most of them are to do with broken glass, and gave me nightmares. Hard to know if this made me develop a phobia, or exaggerated what was already there.
- I woke up late one day to the smell of gas. Some of my flatmates were hanging out in the lounge, unaware that the gas in the kitchen was on. They were about to light a cigarette. I started opening some windows and told them the gas was on, and one said, in a very matter-of-fact way, “Well that was nearly disastrous,” and then he laughed.
- “I don’t know if you should put that in there. Could you put it in the bin or something?” My flatmate had broken a jar, wrapped it in a tea towel, and was now shaking the pieces of glass into the insinkerator. I guess he assumed it would just grind it down into sand and return to the earth.
- “It’s road frisbee,” my flatmate said, flinging a frisbee across a dark street to friends on the other side, as we walked into town. “But what if you hit a car?” I said. “We throw around the cars. Or between them, or over them, or under them.” “You don’t hit the cars?” “Only sometimes.”
- “Hey man, did you know the top of that crate bottle is broken off? Aren’t there bits of broken glass?” This, following a game taking off bottle caps with a fish slice. “Yeah, but it’s fine. I just sift out the bits of glass with my teeth.”
- I once visited a flatmate working on a uni architecture project. He was on a lunch break, and he kept spitting out bits of his lunch. “Is something wrong with it?” I asked. “Nah, it’s fine. Someone left a jar on an element last night, and it exploded all over the pasta. Still finding little bits in there.”
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