Written by: Vrinda Kapadia
After a day of enduring a million hours of tedious lectures, snappy tutorials, and hastily finished assignments on an evening beautifully frosted with a dreadful four-hour lab, you are unexpectedly, boundlessly exhausted. As you swing along merrily on a crowded bus, suffocated and roasted by the heat with a thousand other commuters, how you wish you were just home.
Heaving down the stairs to the basement apartment you share with a roommate, you pray for your home to be at least half as tamed and orderly as when you left it. You unlock the door. Immediately, the realization that you seriously need to work on your relationship with God hits you smack in the face. The kitchen top is covered in a white powder. You panic and swipe a finger on the white dust to figure what the hell it is. Turns out, it is just flour. The sink is overflowing with your roommate’s dishes. Your belly begs for food, so you rummage for your bowl in the mess. To your surprise, the exquisite Value Village kitchenware you lovingly picked out yourself is missing. There is only one suspect to be confronted: your roommate.
The text message conversation goes as follows:
Me : Hi mate, how’s it going? Have you seen my dishes around?
Simon : No dude. Why?
Me : Look Simon, I swear I left my bowl out in the morning to dry by the sink and now it is nowhere to be found.
Simon : Whaaaaat are you TALKING about?!
You think I have your stuff. Wow, you have serious trust issues!
After being vilified for accusing your roommate, you decide to investigate further into this mystery and possibly gather evidence to support your case.
Me : So, I was on Facebook and I saw you had a great time with Tina today. You baked a brownie in a cute mug in the microwave!? THAT WAS MY LOVELY BEAR MUG! I never even washed it with hot water and you radiated it straight for 10 MINUTES? What were you thinking?
Simon : OKAY god I’m soooooooooooooo sorry. Whatever It’s just a mug.
Angry and exasperated, you stomp over to Simon’s room and bang on the door. No response. Desperately, you kick it open. In a flash, there is an instant familiarity to certain items on the desk where Simon is working. But before you make sense of what is happening, Simon leaps from his chair and shoves you out of the room.
Leaning against the door from the inside, he screams: “Ugh, did you not have an assignment or something due today?”
He has your bear mug, your two bowls, and most of your cutlery. So you scream in return, “Give me back my dishes!”
“Fine, let’s be a pair of wise businessmen. When I saw Tina going crazy over your girly set of bowls, I wondered if there were other people out there willing to buy your kitchenware. For starters, I decided to set the price ridiculously high, and believe it or not, I have got quite a few inquiries.”
In your head, plays a montage of all the sweet moments you spent with your dear mug, glasses, and bowls. Emotion overrides you, and you are not going to sell away your dear belongings.
Simon: “So assuming, you are in, let’s break it as 60-40 split since it was my idea-”
You: “Hold the hell up! I don’t want to sell the stuff. I want them back or else!”
And as you push on the door, Simon resists from inside. He manages to turn the lock and does a maniacal laughter. Enough with the nonsense, you warn him once, twice . . . but he stays adamant on his decision to kidnap and sell your dishes. Finally, fed up with your lunatic roommate, you contact a demolition team to come blast down the door.
