Ah, College
"Fraternities make strange bedfellows."

Two years ago, I first moved into a college dorm room. I was shocked to see how much smaller it was than my room back home. Just last week, I moved into my fraternity's new house. And once again, I was surprised to see how small the room was. Though this time I was slightly more surprised about the guy sleeping in my bed.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.

This Fall, my fraternity traded houses with another fraternity. We each agreed to keep our houses clean for each other. My fraternity kept our house in pristine condition for the August newcomers. And the other fraternity, well, at least they put out most of the fires before they moved out.

I had never seen the house before August. When my parents asked about it, I had to guess. When Mom asked about rooms, I said they were big. When Dad asked about the floors, I said we had carpet. And when Mom asked if one of the bathrooms was just a closet with a mailbox in it, I said no. As it turned out, I was 0 for 3.

After a four-hour drive from home with my parents, I just wanted to unpack and go to bed. Of course, at that point, I didn't know there was already someone sleeping there. Otherwise, I'd probably have been trying to figure out whether I wanted to be big spoon or little spoon.

When I first walked in the house, I was a little shocked. There were piles of furniture and random garbage on the floor. A thick odor I couldn't identify hung in the air. And I wondered for the life of me what happened to the car that had apparently driven through the living room to make that mess.

(That reminds me. Congratulations on getting your driver's license, Steve.)

That was my mistake. I went in with too high expectations. Whenever you move to a new place, you have to be able to spot the hidden positives in all the negatives. In my case, "Look! The front door is still on two of the three hinges."

My parents and I stood in that doorway for a solid five minutes. I'm not sure what everyone was thinking just then. My parents probably alternated between concern that I had to live in that place and relief that they didn't.

The more we explored, the more it was obvious the previous fraternity hadn't taken care of the place. From the look (and smell) of things, they seemed to have just swept things under the rug. And when I say they swept things under the rug, I don't mean piles of dust. I mean entire parties, including people, under rugs, where those people died and began to rot.

Now, from what I've said here, you might be thinking I'm trying to say that this is the worst fraternity house ever. I'm not. Though, until we clean the place up, we're probably two broken windows and a blood stain on the wall short of the bronze medal.

You've got to face facts. Fraternity houses are dirty. That's what happens when you put twenty-five guys into one house, forbid girls to live there, and then make everyone drink a lot. Unless Greeks start vomiting Mr. Clean, filth is a problem fraternities will always face in their house. And in most cases their lawn, every Saturday morning.

By now, you're probably wondering what happened with the guy living in my room. According to the landlord, his room wasn't ready and he was staying in my room until it got fixed. I had the option of either living with a complete stranger in a cramped room or living in the semi-luxury of my parents' house for one more week. In the end, the choice was obvious.

I was the big spoon.