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Following up - first dorm mate
Sep. 7th, 2017 02:24 pmMy first year at the UW, 1968, I started by living at home and taking the #7 bus, which passed by our house and conveniently went up University Way or maybe 15th (parallel a block east) about an hour later. More or less. It got old fast, especially when it kept me from being in shows because the last bus was before final curtain.
A lucrative summer job at KOMO-TV gave me the means to move into a dorm the next year. Terry hall. Those of us who did not have a friend to share the room with were assigned someone. When I checked in, a young blonde guy was there, he had pinned a poster above his bed which was very impressive - a Mercedes Benz luxury car completely disassembled and all the parts polished and shiny silver. It was a beautiful poster photographically, and he said it was what inspired him to become a mechanical engineering major. His dream was to help design and build Mercedes cars.
On his night stand was a phonograph and a stack of records, which he said "don't worry, I won't play them while you're here".
As the quarter progressed, he changed from the happy, relaxed guy to more and more stressed and paranoid. The first clue he was nuts is he accused me of being homosexually interested in him. He said he heard me talking in my sleep, coming on to him. Soon after that I came back to the dorm to hear German coming out of his phonograph. He was supposed to be in class at the time. It turned out his stack of records were all songs of Hitler Youth from the late 30's.
The next day I talked to the dorm councilor to change rooms/roommates, and he told me I was too late, Nazi boy had flunked out and would be gone by the time I was back from classes.
And he was.
Normally, they would have moved in someone from the waiting list, but luckily for me, they had already accommodated everyone on the list, and I had the room to myself for the rest of the school year.
Having a solo room was very good for my love life, Terry Hall was really two dorms, a woman's and men's pair, separated only by fire doors between them. The doors were locked between 2 and 6 am, because (as a UW Daily editorial snarked) it's a well known Scientific Fact that conception can only occur during those hours.
A lucrative summer job at KOMO-TV gave me the means to move into a dorm the next year. Terry hall. Those of us who did not have a friend to share the room with were assigned someone. When I checked in, a young blonde guy was there, he had pinned a poster above his bed which was very impressive - a Mercedes Benz luxury car completely disassembled and all the parts polished and shiny silver. It was a beautiful poster photographically, and he said it was what inspired him to become a mechanical engineering major. His dream was to help design and build Mercedes cars.
On his night stand was a phonograph and a stack of records, which he said "don't worry, I won't play them while you're here".
As the quarter progressed, he changed from the happy, relaxed guy to more and more stressed and paranoid. The first clue he was nuts is he accused me of being homosexually interested in him. He said he heard me talking in my sleep, coming on to him. Soon after that I came back to the dorm to hear German coming out of his phonograph. He was supposed to be in class at the time. It turned out his stack of records were all songs of Hitler Youth from the late 30's.
The next day I talked to the dorm councilor to change rooms/roommates, and he told me I was too late, Nazi boy had flunked out and would be gone by the time I was back from classes.
And he was.
Normally, they would have moved in someone from the waiting list, but luckily for me, they had already accommodated everyone on the list, and I had the room to myself for the rest of the school year.
Having a solo room was very good for my love life, Terry Hall was really two dorms, a woman's and men's pair, separated only by fire doors between them. The doors were locked between 2 and 6 am, because (as a UW Daily editorial snarked) it's a well known Scientific Fact that conception can only occur during those hours.
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