Student column: Roommate in the bathroom

By Jimmy Langton

We had claimed our beds and settled in -- three friends sharing a room for a week.

Suddenly, awkward silence spilled into the room as our unknown roommate emerged from our bathroom.

“I was a little freaked out by the conversation going on in the room,” said Jacob Pruitt, a Blue Valley High School senior.

After all, it isn’t every day you meet three strangers on your way out of the john. Our profanities and jokes that no outsider could comprehend ceased for fear of possibly staining our Johnson County rep.

“Initial reaction was obviously freaky,” said roommate Terris Ford, a Shawnee Mission South senior.

Ford and the rest of us stared stared blankly at Jacob’s surprise appearance to the point of awkwardness.

Stalk still on the opposite end of the room, Jacob stood not quite sure how to react. Much like ourselves.

“Well, even though it wasn’t the first time a strange man popped out of my bathroom, I was still a little surprised -- at first,” said Kirby O’Neal, a Shawnee Mission South junior.

In unison, we harmonized an awkward “Heeeey.”

“We started talking, and it was just weird -- we completely forgot to ask him his name so he kinda just told us,” Ford said. “We just needed to, like, talk and get it out of the way.”

After initial surprise in seeing Jacob -- our stranger from the bathroom -- we’ve found he isn’t a bad roomie after all. It didn’t take long until we got back to normal, profanities and crazy talk included. Poor Jacob just laughs at our weirdness.

Jimmy Langton is a senior at Shawnee Mission South High School and a student in the advanced writing class at the Flint Hills Publications Workshop.