Roomie Mistake 101

Roomie Mistake 101

Dear reader, 

I'm about to share with you my first (and so far only) big 'roomie mistake'. Before moving to Rotterdam, I shared a tiny flat with a friend in the 11th district in Paris. Initially, it only had one bedroom, but we changed the living room into a bedroom to make it livable for two people. We had a small kitchen lacking an oven and a table, but neither of us was a great chef anyway. I loved this apartment. Unlike many apartments in Paris, it was clean and full of light, and there was a delicious banh mi shop in our street, where I bought sandwiches almost every day. 

After 2 years of happy co-living, we were about to move out. At that time, I was finishing my gap year, working as a waitress in a cafe to save some money. My roommate was in the middle of exams, completing her first year of Master's. It happened on a Monday morning. I woke up early, put on the first clothes I could find, and ran outside because, as usual, I was late. I grabbed my keys and rushed to the metro. Later that day, my roommate texted me: “You took my keys!!”. Going through my pockets, I realized that, indeed, I had two sets of keys: hers and mine. In my haste, I hadn't realized my own keys were in my bag when I grabbed hers on the kitchen counter. Nothing dramatic so far, it wasn't the first time it was happening. I would be home before her and would open the door for her.

At night that same day, I was peacefully rotting in bed while my roommate was out having drinks with friends - I have to specify that she had an exam the following day. Now, you should understand better why we got along so well: we were both low-key alcoholics in exam times. Around 11 pm, I turned off my phone to peacefully enjoy my book without being disturbed. Soon after, I fell asleep because this book wasn't as entertaining as the endless stream of Instagram reels. Hearing some muffled noises, I pressed my earplugs deeper into my ears, until I could only hear my own breathing. 

The day after, I woke up to 20 missed calls and about 100 texts. They're all from my roommate. At 11.05 pm she texted me, “You better not fall asleep, you have my keys”. At 11.30 pm, “ALICE, I'M AT THE DOOR, OPEN”. Suddenly, these muffled noises I had heard the previous night made sense: they were coming from my roommate banging on the door. My heart started racing, and my palms were sweating, as I realized I had locked my roommate out for the night. Immediately, I ran to her bedroom, which was empty. I then ran to the door, expecting to see her asleep on the doormat after hours of desperate attempts at waking me up. I opened it and looked down, but she wasn't there.

In between a billion apologies texts, I asked her where she was. Turns out, she slept at her parents' place, an hour away from our flat. I expected her to be angry at me, yelling and telling me I was a terrible roommate. Not at all. She only complained she didn't have her eyebrow pen to draw her eyebrows - she is so blond you cannot see them - before her exam, and laughed about the situation. I had taken my roommate's keys, forgotten about it, and fallen asleep at the sound of her attempts at waking me up, and yet she was laughing about it. How could I ever find a better roommate? 

To this day, even though we're not living together anymore, we still call each other 'roomie' and share the smallest, most uninteresting details of our lives on a daily basis.