Your freshman year of college can be a stressful time. You have to learn how to be independent while also being forced to share a tiny room with a complete stranger. You may bond with your roommate and have a great time, or you may be paired with someone who has strange habits you just can't stand.
Reddit user u/trackster96 posed the question, "What is your horrible freshman roommate story?" The thread quickly filled with thousands of eye-opening and jaw-dropping stories. Here are some of the wildest:
1. "He would leave dirty plates in his bed and cover them with his sheets. When it was time for him to sleep, he'd just kicked the plates away rather than clean them."
2. "I walked into my dorm room to find my roommate and her parents looking through my underwear drawer. They didn't even act apologetic. Her mom just commented on how cute my dinosaur underwear were. So weird."
3. "One morning I woke up to a burning sensation on my leg. My fucking roommate lit my leg hair on fire. We duked it out for about 10 minutes, and I decided it would be best to change rooms. I found out I couldn't until the end of the semester, so from September to December, I had to share a room with the kid who lit my leg hair on fire. I never got an explanation for why he did it."
4. "On our first day of college, he cooked spaghetti bolognese for everyone on our floor. He then showed me that he used a can of dog food in the sauce."
5. "The very first weekend of my freshman year in college, my roommate came back from a party at like 2 a.m. and proceeded to vomit on my desk and laptop."
6. "He had a girlfriend that didn't attend our university and would stay for entire weekends. When she was over, they would stay in bed, keep the lights off, order delivery, and refuse to leave. At one point, I woke up and there was a baby in our room. They were babysitting."
7. "She baptized me with a water bottle while I was sleeping after she caught me watching porn."
8. "My roommate shit his pants three separate times throughout the year like it was a normal thing people did. One of his friends who visited did it too."
9. "My roommate had a booger wall. On move-out day, he revealed a side of the wall that had previously been covered by books and out of sight from my side of the dorm. He had been sticking boogers there for the entire semester. There was a yellow-brown circle of boogers about the size of a beach ball."
10. "My roommate did the Nair-in-shampoo trick."
11. "My roommate wore a puppet on her shoulder and if you asked her a question, she would answer with the puppet. It was a puppet of a griffin, which is a mythological creature that’s a combination of a lion and eagle. We also had all the same classes together and I woke up late more than once to that damn puppet in my face telling me the time."
12. "My freshman roommate had a habit of hiding his booze in my desk (without my permission) so he wouldn't get the heat if he got caught. One day, I came back to the room and found my tablet smashed. Apparently, he heard someone knock on the door and thought it was an RA, so he opened a drawer in my desk and threw a glass bottle in it, shattering my tablet."
13. "My roommate thought it was okay to have his dad sleep in my bed (without my permission) after they partied together while I was gone for the weekend."
14. "She taped a piece of paper over her clock because she didn't want to 'share' it. She, of course, could not read the time either. But she'd rather suffer than have to share anything with me."
15. "At the end of the year, my roommate gave me a list of everything I owned that he'd had sex on."
16. "He left dozens of water bottles of piss all over the apartment since the six-foot walk to the bathroom was too much."
17. "He used to walk around completely naked, with the exception of a hat. He even did this while my girlfriend was over. I said something to him about it once. He walked up to me, almost close enough for it to touch me, and asked if I wanted my ass kicked. I changed rooms shortly after."
18. "She decided it'd be a good idea to dry a towel on top of a lamp. It caught fire, and we had to move to a different hall for two months."
19. "My roommate freshman year brewed tea in our bathtub and would bottle it up with empty apple juice containers and store it in our fridge. I did not store anything in the fridge for the remainder of the year."
20. "She brought a chihuahua into a no-pets dorm and left it alone all night. It howled."
21. And: "My roommate pooped on me."
Do you have a roommate horror story? Drop it in the comments below!
Note: Submissions will be edited for length and/or clarity.