Breakfast with Amber

August 2021: Rooming with Amber

On August 21, 2021, the students of Trinity University, myself included, finally had a proper move-in day. I had been placed in Myrtle once again with the Swashbucklers. I bet you're wondering who the Swashbucklers are. They're a living community on Trinity. While they are the school's drug-free living community, the main pull is the weekly community events and the pirate theming. Yo ho ho and a bottle of water.

I mentioned the Daileys in a previous chapter, and I'm going to bring them up again. My mom befriended them over the Trinity parents group on Facebook since they both live in Cypress, and while I was still on campus in the spring, my parents came to visit me bringing with them a care package from Mrs. Dailey to deliver to their son, Chris. When we met up with him to bring the package, he noticed the Game Grumps shirt that I was wearing and suggested that I join the Swashbuckers, which he was a member of. They had a lot of gamers there, and I'd fit right in. My immediate reaction was, "Sure, I like gamers," but two years later, my reaction was, "Sure, I'd definitely prefer it over the agony of finding my own roommate."

Due to COVID, the Swashbucklers weren't living together my sophomore year, but they were still having events virtually. I could join in for movie nights and games of Jackbox all from my own dorm while getting to know all the guys (and yes, there were a lot of guys).

I applied in April after discovering that the alternative was the agonizing process of finding my own roommate. I'd fill out a survey with what times I woke up and got to bed (6:40 am and sometime between 10-11 pm), whether I preferred the room quiet or didn't mind friends coming over (quiet, please), and whether I wanted a room on the second floor where the Swashies would be holding their annual Haunted Hall in October (I didn't mind either way).

I got a spot in the Swashbucklers later that month. I would be in Myrtle room 208 with Amber Lewis. I saw the e-mail the first time and thought, "Oh, cool." Then I remembered seeing Amber's name and thought, "Wait a dam minute."

At this point, Amber and I were still in Japanese class, so we knew each other that way. I wonder if Amber also knew we were going to room together. I don't remember her bringing it up in class.

Fast forward to August, and the two of us are moving in together. Either she dyed her hair over the summer, or my memory of her wasn't as sharp as I thought because when I first met her that day, her hair was dyed Todoroki style with the left side being black and the right side being purple, and for years, I thought it was blonde.

I think she arrived first and claimed the bed closer to the door because I had the bed by the window. Mom also took a picture of me on my side of the room where Dad is standing by the window looking outside in full observation mode, hands on his hips and hunched forward. That one's a keeper.

The bathroom, which is usually shared with the room next door, was all ours because instead of there being a bedroom to the right of our room, there was the common room. It was a little confusing, opening up the bathroom door and seeing a blank wall on the other end of the room instead of another door like I had been seeing for the past semester. The downside of only having one door to the bathroom, though, was there was only one door's worth of towel racks to cram all our towels on.

That evening, my parents and I went to dinner at Quarry Hofbrau, and then I wriggled out of my mom's arms and returned to my room for the night. With all due respect to my other roommates, Amber was my best roommate in college. When she saw me getting my earbuds out to watch YouTube videos, she said, "You don't need headphones." When she heard the music I was listening to, she asked, "Is that French?"

"Korean," I answered, and then we had dinner together and talked about K-pop.

Most importantly, when I couldn't sleep because Amber had left the room and left her little wall lamps on, I messaged her, "Hey, do you mind if I turn off your lamps? I'm trying to sleep."