by Thomas Russell

Created on: July 04, 2008

As roommates go, Bill wasn't all that bad. He was nice enough and was always congenial, but this man had a definite compulsive disorder. He was a neat freak. I'm thoroughly convinced he could give Felix Unger from the "Odd Couple" a run for his money.

I was pretty desperate to find a roommate to live with at college because I got my application in too late. So when I received a call to "interview" with him as he put it, I was ecstatic but at the same time a little unnerved. I felt like my character was on display. I guess I deserved the scrutiny because his previous roommate turned into a Dungeons & Dragons guru.

I somehow managed to sway his decision because the both of us were cross country runners in high school. When I moved in, I realized I was entering the Mecca of Spotlessness. His coffee table had four magazines fanned out perfectly, with two wax candles equidistant from each other. You couldn't see a speck of dirt on the carpet in the living room, or the whole apartment for the matter. The kitchen was immaculate with all utensils perfectly aligned in a jar. Keep in mind, my observational skills were not that keen back then, but my memory of that first day is so vivid as I recall his obsessive behavior.

When he took the first shower the next day, I discovered he had an affinity for taking a long, long, tortuous time cleaning every pore in his body. I never thought I'd ever time someone in the bathroom, but when the hour was up, I had to wonder if he had drained all the hot water from the entire apartment complex.

When he brought home his groceries, he took everything out of his bags, took a paper towel and wiped every single package down. It was second nature to him. I once asked him why he did that and he explained his father was a Little Debbie delivery driver and he saw him drop a package on the ground, picked it up and placed it back in the rack. He was repulsed by that so much that he decided every package he ever bought suffered the same fate as that lone donut box.

The kicker for me dealing with a whacko was the time my friend visited for the weekend. Before she left, she did the considerate thing and washed and dried all the dishes. After she left, he promptly took all the dishes she washed and re-washed them again. What? It was then that I realized I was in the presence of another Howard Hughes personfied, only without the long fingernails and grizzly beard and billions of dollars.

I managed to survive that year without pulling my hair out. Even if I didn't rip every follicle, I half imagined him following with a little hand held vaccuum cleaner to clean up the debris.

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