When school first started, all eight roommates were fascinated with our room. It was huge! Giant! So much space compared to the regular dorm-room double! We have an upstairs, four doors, four mini-fridges, big windows, floor space, a high ceiling, and we're at the end of the hallway. It was pretty cool to walk in on move-in day and say, "This is where I will be living."
After a week or so of living in this room, everyone living in it got used to it. This was what we slowly started to call "home." Every day we could just walk in after classes (usually without even needing keys because someone is always here), plop our stuff onto our desks, and take a little break while chatting with some of the other roommates. The look of the room and finding out who was living in it were not new to us.
However, other people in our building and on our floor were still in awe, so we got a lot of visitors. Most of them would timidly knock on the door, but there were a few who took a different route...
The most memorable happened at 2 a.m. the second week of school. One of our upstairs doors started shaking as all of us were in bed trying to fall asleep. We figured it was the guy who lives in the room right next to our door going inside his room.
That wasn't the case.
Light flooded in and three people came in. It was terrifying! From the positioning of my bed, I was the only one who could see the door open and all three people come in. None of us wanted to confront them with our pajamas, bedhead, and makeup-less faces, so we all kind of hid under the covers and looked around in the dark downstairs. It took about thirty seconds for a few people to say, "Hello?" but nobody answered.
Before we knew it, two of the people left and trapped one inside by holding the door shut from the outside. It also just so happened that the one trapped inside was only wearing a towel...
When we noticed that, our bravest roommate came down from her bunk and marched upstairs to reprimand these people who did turn out to be boys from upstairs who decided to exploit the fact that we were still not sure how to mess with the lock on that door to get it to properly lock. They said they wanted to see what the room looked like because they thought we would not let them in during the day. After releasing the one guy in the towel, we were finally able to fully lock the door and get some rest, but we don't think the tension we intentionally created between these "friendly" neighbors allowed them to get as much rest. We didn't react with laughs or games as they probably expected, and the relationship between them and us has been a little tense ever since then.
But, I must say I am glad it was only a few wacky boys who got inside. It could have been other people who were more dangerous or had bad intentions. Looking back on it, I would have to say I learned to never let your guard down too much, and don't burn bridges by betraying any existing sense of trust. In our case, our room was different, so people wanted to see it, even when they were wearing only a towel. Lesson in security: lock up. You don't know what's outside your door.
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