Being in the kitchen has always been such a positive thing for me. But when I recently had to move in a roommate, I had a kitchen experience I never experienced before, and it shook me to my core. Yesterday, after making a delicious coconut curry from scratch, I searched the cabinet to find the proper vessel for my meal, there were none to be found. I searched the sink, and even the coffee table in the living room, but there was not a bowl to be found. That’s when I realized: my roommate had hoarded all six of our common bowls in her bedroom.
My roomie was normally respectful and unobtrusive. She mostly kept to herself, but she knew how much food meant to me. More importantly, why the fuck would someone stack six dirty bowls on top of one another without even bringing, like, one to the sink? Like just one.
Honestly, I thought I knew my roommate. But I guess I didn’t. That was the worst night of my young life.
I weighed out all my options: Do I just eat straight from the pot, like some disgusting frat boy? What if I scooped some into a tupperware container? I even considered sculpting a bowl from a few sheets of aluminum foil and hoping that it didn’t leak. I suddenly found myself unable to move at all, in shock from the idea that someone would repeatedly go to the kitchen to get more food without taking the bowls they already used to eat food. How could somebody do this?
When I finally came to, I reluctantly went into my roommate’s room, grabbed one of the bowls, and washed it. I shouldn’t have had to, but this person I thought I knew had left me without a choice. My belly was full. But my spirit? My spirit was broken. Also one of the bowls was also broken because she stacked them on top of each other like some kind of monster.
Next time, I’ll do something to stop this before it starts. When I notice our clean bowl supply dwindling, I’ll speak up. No one should ever have to go through what I did. To everyone out there living with roommates, heed my warning: Don’t be me. Buy more than six bowls, and make sure you have a backup stored away someplace safe. You owe it to yourself and to your dinner.
