Little Stories: Meeting My College Roommate

A man who knew what he wanted.

Little Stories, focusing on memories from my youth, is a recurring feature of Inconspicuous Consumption.

During the summer of 1982, I was 18 years old and getting ready for my first semester of college. At some point the university sent me a letter informing me that my freshman-year roommate would be a guy named Jeff. He and I arranged to have a phone call so we could get acquainted before we met each other in the dorm.

Jeff sounded nice enough. We asked each other all the usual things — which towns we were from, how big our respective high schools were, what music we liked. Then Jeff asked me what my major would be.

I wasn’t yet sure about that, so I said, “I’m undecided for now. How about you?”