Real Life Roommate #1: Ped

After I had moved to San Diego, I really didn't want to spend a lot of time trying to find a place to live. Looking for a place I could afford on my own wasn't working out. (I mean, I couldn't find a studio for about $200 a month like I had in Denver.) I knew I was going to have to find a roommate as I was getting on my feet.

I didn't really know what I wanted in a roommate. I knew I didn't want a female. I was aware of the pitfalls associated with that. If I found her attractive, I would fall in love with her, but she wouldn't feel that way about me. But if she wasn't attractive, she would fall in love with me and I would feel that way about her. That was just too much potential drama for me to handle.

I also wasn't too certain I wanted a roommate close to my own age. I was afraid I'd wind up with some party animal who would have people coming and going all the time. That was just not the lifestyle I wanted. I was just used to doing things on my own all the time, so I wanted the closest thing to solitude that I could get.

It appeared that I found that in Ped. He was a 39-year-old man. He walked around on crutches, but was able to work and drive himself. He said that when he was first born, he stopped breathing for about 30 seconds and this somehow impacted his brain's ability to control his legs. He had been married and divorced and had two sons, but they were in another part of the country. When we first met, we seemed to get along okay and we decided that I would pay the deposit and move in after I was done with my stay at the residential hotel.

He worked as a substitute school teacher. He was hoping that it would lead to him becoming a full-time teacher. In the meantime, he would wake up Monday through Friday around 5am and wait for a phone call from the school district. If a teacher called out, he would get a call to inform him where he needed to report for work. If he didn't get a call, he didn't work that day.

He also did some volunteer work for the Canine Companions program. He helped to train dogs who would be used to assist disabled people.

Ped had served in Navy Intelligence. He told me that he was once given a bunch of military files to shred. Among those files was Lee Harvey Oswald's military record. He said that while he was shredding the other files, he read that record from front to back. The information in file included the fact that Oswald was terrible at shooting (which was actually a well-known fact). It was for this reason that he thought that the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy.

Pretty soon after I moved in, Ped got really sick. He would stay in bed all day long. I guess if he got up and did anything, he did it while I was at work. Things were like this for the first three weeks that I lived there. It was almost like I was living alone.

Ped had his quirks. One of the things he would do is rent porn and watch it in the living room while I was in my bedroom. If I came out of the bedroom, he would immediately stop the VCR. I never said anything to him. I just thought it was funny he was acting like his father came into the room and was about to catch him in the act.

The only time Ped and I did something together was when we went to La Jolla to see "Bugsy" at Landmark's Cove Theatre. We were able to hang out at the house and watch TV from time to time, but it wasn't very frequent.

Around 4:30am one day, I woke up to hear him talking on the phone. He was saying, "I think I'm having a heart attack!" I then heard him give our address. At the time, I thought I was dreaming this was taking place. I was really tired and quickly fell back asleep. I woke up about 30 minutes later to the sound of emergency personnel in our living room. I got up and saw that paramedics had surrounded him and placed an oxygen mask on him. They took him out into the ambulance. I asked where he was being taken to. They told me he would be at the UCSD Medical Center.

Before I went to work that night, I gathered some of his clothes and other belongings and went over to see him in the hospital. He told me what he was diagnosed with. I don't remember now what the problem was, but he didn't think he was going to be in the hospital more than a couple of days. However, things got worse later on as he got some kind of staph infection in his leg and had to stay a lot longer, almost a whole month.

When he came back home, he had a serious talk with me. He didn't think he was going to be able to get around much on crutches anymore and soon may be confined to a wheelchair. He didn't know when that was going to happen, but he was going to have to prepare for it. One of the things he was going to be able to do was get a dog from Canine Companions that would come live with us.

He got the dog. It was a golden retriever and was a really good dog. She had a couple of accidents, but those were few and far between. It didn't matter, because I wasn't responsible for her care of her or taking her out for walks.

However, I didn't like the idea that I might wind up serving as a kind of nurse to Ped. I decided that I had gotten my feet on the ground and no longer needed a roommate. I wanted to be on my own. I found a small studio for just a little more than what I was paying for rent at the time and decided to move in a week later. When I told him, he didn't get upset about me moving out, but he got mad because I hadn't planned to pay the rent for the next month. He expected at least that much. I realized he was right and managed to get him the rent I owed him.

I did stop by to see him a couple of times after that to collect any mail that happened to come for me. He never did get another roommate to replace me. Eventually, he moved out of that apartment. A few years later, I saw him interviewed on the TV news regarding Canine Companions.

I recently found him on Facebook. According to his profile, he had moved to Santee, which is in the metropolitan area on the east side. He appeared to have lost a lot of weight since I knew him. However, he hadn't posted anything since 2011. Up to that point, he had posted photos of a cruise he took to China. I also found he had written letters to the editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune regarding education issues around 2008. One of those letters mentioned that he was retired from teaching. I wasn't able to find an obituary, so he's probably still alive.

So, my relationship with him was like so many of my college roommates. I don't think we had any kind of real impact on each others' lives.