During the summer of 1984, I received my annual postcard from Eastern New Mexico University informing me of who my roommate was going to be. His name was Vird and he was from New York. The cards I had received the previous two years listed my roommate's name, address and phone number. I never tried to contact either of them before school started and they didn't try to contact me. Back then, long distance calls were expensive and usually avoided unless absolutely necessary.
So I was surprised when Vird called me up to find out about me and how things were going to be in the room. I told him I was junior and that I had lived in the same room for the last two years. I told him I took the bed closest to the window. He seemed like a nice guy.
When I had returned to ENMU, I went to my room. He had just gotten there about a half-hour before I did. He was about my height, and had dark hair. He was also overweight, but had a photo of himself with a rather attractive girlfriend. There was another person with him in the room who had also come from New York. They were both from Long Island and had come over on the same shuttle with some other freshman students from New York.
The first thing that had happened was that he had forgotten which bed I wanted. I still got the one by the window, but it seemed odd that he wanted to get that part straightened out over the phone first, but didn't follow through once he arrived. If I had arrived a few hours later, he would have claimed that bed and I probably would have had to deal with it.
We really didn't have a lot in common. We could hang out and talk in the room, but he otherwise hung out with his friends from New York. The all wound up pledging the fraternity that Toilethead belonged to. When ENMU's student newspaper published photos of Fraternity Pledge Week, there was a picture of him and a friend with Toilethead.
One of the things he had a tendency to do was gripe about being in "the badlands." He would always go on about how much things were better in New York. He talked about how he could just barely turn the radio dial and find a station on almost any frequency. He complained about how stupid people from New Mexico were (around his friends) and basically wasn't very happy with being at ENMU.
It wasn't long before he decided to be roommates with one of his frat buddies instead. I was actually kind of relieved that I would get the room all to myself again, but that only lasted a couple of weeks becaause I soon got College Roommate #7.
I would see Vird at the dorm and on campus every once in awhile. We were still friendly to each other. However, I found out that he was part of the phone ringing incident. When I was trying to figure out who was making the call to the RA's phone next door, I called Vird's number. It was busy, EVERY SINGLE TIME I CALLED. It was hard for me to believe that he was a party to that and that he didn't put a stop to it after awhile. All he had to do was hang up the phone. I guess he decided that his fraternity brothers were more important than doing the right thing.
So, what happened to Vird? Even though he didn't like ENMU during his freshman year, he did graduate from there. He evetually became a chiropractor and has a practice in Hollywood, FL. This means he gets to be called "Dr. Vird." It really wasn't what I expected out of him.
But I'm not planning on making any connections with him anytime soon.
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