Adventures in Civilization - the Desperate Art of Agreeing

- Page 2 -

"Hey there." He glances briefly up from the call display list on the phone, then resumes scrolling through the list of callers.

"Hey. Did you just get home?" I'm trying to act nonchalant but something is not quite right.

"Yep, I did." Tyson is more interested with the contents of the list of callers than in talking with me, probably because I'm standing there in my underwear.

"You weren't screwing around out front of the house for a few minutes, or something?"

Tyson's attention is suddenly diverted away from the grisly record of his popularity contained on our digital phone. "No, why?" His wind is up.

No torment is so great that it can't be made easier by seeing someone who has it worse than you.

"Well…" I eye his bedroom door for a moment before continuing. "Maybe five minutes ago I got woken up by a bunch of crashing and banging coming from your room. I thought it was you coming home. Sounded like you were going to come right through the wall."

Tyson is regarding his bedroom door now. "Huh. No, I just got in right now. I wasn't making any noise. And I haven't been in my room yet."

He walks over and swings his door open and regards the room. "My stuff is messed up." He sounds sort of surprised.

"What do you mean?"

"All the papers and books on my desk are all over the floor. And my desk chair is on the wrong side of the room."

I peer into the room, verifying a state of dishevelment not commonly associated with Tyson's room. "Hmm. This is weird."

"Yeah. Yeah, I was wondering when I came up the walk, why my bedroom light was on, because I know I turned it off before I left." Tyson is speaking kind of quietly now. He's calm, but he seems dismayed. I'm growing more pleased by the moment because it's not my room.

"Well, that's pretty odd. I guess I'll be getting back to bed."

Tyson eye's his room disheartenedly. "Yeah, I guess I'd might as well too." He quietly resigns himself to the inevitable and disappears into his room. I retreat to my own room, content in the knowledge that Tyson is going to have a much worse night than I will. No torment is so great that it can't be made easier by seeing someone who has it worse than you.

So you kind of get a sense of what life in our little household was like. However, as odd as it all was, what was even more interesting is what we learned from it. You see, one of our roommates, Reece, began discussing it with people. He brought it up with people at work, and they responded with ghost stories of their own. He mentioned it to friends, and they had creepy tales of their own nocturnal encounters. Hell, he even started talking about it on dates. The result was more weird stories.