The Observer, September 29, 2006
Volume XXXIX, Issue 5
A Fresh Perspective: Honeymoon period over for dorm-mates
It was inevitable. After four weeks of having amazing relations with your floor-mates, roommates, dorm-mates and any other people that you can think of, the euphoric high has dispersed. Instead, the time has come in which you realize that you actually have to live with these people.
True, there are a select few who seem to be incapable of getting on your nerves. However, to compensate for those few, there is another group that will. And it is this second group that seems to grow exponentially as the school year continues.
Now there are many different types of people that will grate your nerves. But for the sake of brevity, I will only talk about two.
The first, (let's name him Maurice), who suffers from chronic loudness after quiet hours. Maurice seems to have lost his "indoor voice"- you know the one that most of us developed in elementary school. And to make matters worse, once that magic hour hits when the rest of the dorm remains silent, Maurice's voice seems to be amplified by a hundred-fold.
During the first week of classes, a single Maurice seemed to dominate our residence hall. Over the past few weeks, however, Maurice has morphed from one person into a posse of Maurices differentiated only by physical characteristics. It was during one of the Maurice posse's particularly loud episodes that a group of decidedly studious individuals were graced with the concept of a new invention. The invention is known affectionately as the Universal-Maurice-Silencing-Device.
This device will be in the form of a typical remote control, but instead of channel settings, there would be a dial to adjust to the different Maurice-voice frequencies. So, with possession of the Universal-Maurice-Silencing-Device, studious individuals would be able to adjust to the frequency of each Maurice's voice and then press the "study button" to mute the loud Maurice.
For now, unfortunately, since the high-tech Universal-Maurice-Silencing-Device is still in the drawing board stage, we must resort to duct tape for now. (For this application you must first corner the Maurice you wish to silence, and place the tape over their mouth – but please be sure to leave their nose uncovered).
The second type I will comment on, let's call him Otto. Otto suffers from seemingly uncontrollable body odor. Unfortunately, Ottos also enjoy visiting other people's rooms, transferring their particular odor to this victim's room.
Now the difficulty with Otto is that many are unable to find ways to approach the issue directly. One method to reform an Otto is to periodically hang air fresheners from the nearest hook-ears tend to work rather well. Hopefully this will tip-off Otto to the hygiene issue. However, a number of Ottos seem to not be capable of recognizing such subtle hints. So if you find one occupying your chair in your dorm room, your best bet is to take out your Febreze and oh so subtly spray the Otto-occupied chair.
Now I have only covered two of hundreds of nerve grating persons that you might encounter here at Case. But with these examples, you should now be able to find a way to cope with your own Maurices and Ottos. And if all else fails, duct tape fixes everything.
