ROOMMATES

I got together with some old roommates recently and we talked for four hours straight. The three of us hadn’t sat in a room together for close to 40 years and at points, it seemed like no time had passed at all.

I consider living with roommates as a rite of passage. You typically have roommates when you first leave the family nest, be it for college, or just the start of your adult life.

My first apartment away from my parent’s home was a one-bedroom which was shared by three of us. My two roommates were strangers when I moved in with them. I met them through a friend who read a posting on a New York University activity board (yes, people actually thumb-tacked index cards to a bulletin board to get the word out). My friend knew I was hoping to move to New York from our hometown of Philadelphia. To make a long story short, I interviewed with the prospective roommates and was selected, so off to the Big Apple I went. I have no idea what became of those two people.

I lived in that apartment for about a year, however, when the landlord wanted the apartment back, I needed to search for another roommate situation. I found what I will fondly refer to as the “10D Girls.” We lived in Apartment 10D in a pre-war building on the Upper West Side. There would be four of us in total, living in a make-shift four bedroom apartment; the dining room was turned into a bedroom, as was the tiny maid’s room where I ended up sleeping for some time. Once again, I did not know the people I was to live with. Spoiler alert, it was two of these girls I saw recently.

When I first moved into Apartment 10D, the people living in the apartment were three girls and a guy. Two of us were performers, the guy worked for Calvin Klein, and the fourth had recently started working at a bank. For all of us, this was our first real taste of independence.

The person who worked at a bank and I moved in at the same time. She took the dining room. After about a year of my sleeping in the maid’s room, the guy decided to move out, so I took his much larger bedroom and we began a search for a fourth roommate.

Back in the day, there were roommate finding services. Remember, we did not have access to home computers, yet alone the internet. We would pay a service and on a weekly basis, they would send us a print-out of potential roommates. These lists were either messengered to us or snail mailed. I can’t quite remember, but e-mail didn’t exist yet.

A book can be written about the search for a fourth roommate. The characters that you come across in New York are like no other. All walks of life, professions, beliefs, habits. You had to screen out the mildly sane from the outrageous and this screening occurred in person. No Zoom meeting first. Because our schedules were different, we divided and conquered and at least two of us would meet with the prospective roommate and if we liked them, we would get the third involved.

I will spare you all the crazy details, but we decided upon what we thought was a lovely, wholesome girl, who also was a performer. Her name was Amber. Amber moved into my old room (the maid’s room) and let’s just say, she didn’t last long. Amber did not have an issue wandering around the apartment completely naked. This meant that when we brought home a date, friends, or our mothers, you never knew what state of dress Amber might be in. AWKWARD!

The straw that broke the camel’s back was that Amber took it upon herself to raid our roommate Jennifer’s closet while she was out of town. I remember coming back from work one evening and seeing Amber fully dressed, which was a nice change, but I said to her “that dress looks just like one Jennifer has.” By the way, the dress was a “special occasion only” dress; one Jennifer used to perform in. My roommate Beth pulled me aside, and frantically told me it was Jennifer’s dress and Amber was wearing it without permission. Let’s just say between the awkward nakedness and the stealing, we dumped her. I’m not even sure if she lasted a month.

The search began again, but this time we lucked out and found our true fourth – Lynne. Henceforth, the 10D girls bonded, and lived peacefully together for a few years. Well, peaceful in that we all got along, but trust me, our lives, were anything but calm, which is what makes the relationship amongst us so special.

During the four years we lived together, we did what typical 20-somethings do – date, drink, party, explore, drive cross-country, switch careers, nurse each other through break-ups – the usual stuff. I do remember one time when I pretended to be Lynne on the phone to a guy she no longer wanted to date, and I broke up with him for her. You see, this was a common occurrence in my life and I had a standard break-up line “I’m not interested in pursuing this any further.” Worked every time. Stopped the man right in his tracks and just like that the deed was done.

Basically, this phase of rooming together, was a period of growth for all of us. Trying to figure out who we wanted to be, what we wanted to do, and laying the groundwork for what we hope would be a happy future. I cannot emphasize enough how important this period of growth is for a young adult. I am so glad I had these roommates to help me navigate this treasured time in my life. It is this experience that propped me up when I was sliding and also helped me take the next step forward in adulting.

Jennifer decided to get her MBA and was accepted at Stanford University, so off she left for the west coast. That unfortunately, triggered the fact that we were in an illegal sublet, and the super turned us in. The building was going condo and they wanted to vacate the building. We didn’t have a leg to stand.

So off we went. I moved to Astoria Queens with another roommate, and Beth and Lynne moved further out in Queens. We stayed in touch here and there, but it is Facebook that really helped us to stay in each other’s lives.

Fast forward close to 40 years, we are in my apartment in NYC, and the conversation is flowing. We remembered the past fondly but didn’t stay stuck there. We caught up on current events, personal experiences, and of course, our families. The three of us are now all in our 60s, we are mothers, and we have all lost at least one parent.

Our lives took three different paths after we left Apartment 10D, but the wonderful thing was we were still those 20-somethings at our core. Our value system which drew us together all those many years ago was still intact, and we continue to learn and grow from each other.

The roommate experience in one’s early 20s is like no other. As I prepare my son for college, I emphasize the importance of going away to school and having roommates. One roommate may be just that, someone to share the rent, as was my first apartment in New York City. If you are lucky, however like I was, you get into a roommate relationship that truly contributes to your well-being and growth.

The 10D girls were a wonderful phase of my life and, truth be told, sometimes I wish I could go back. We had this incredible shared experience at a critical time in our young lives. An experience that we look back on fondly and still appreciate 40-years later.

To the 10D girls, thank you for selecting me to become part of your journeys. As Charles Dickens stated, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”