"Would you all stop yelling in our apartment? You are ruining moving day for us!"
--Matthew Perry, Friends, 1994
Rachel: "Thanks for the party. Do you want me to help clean up?"
Monica: "Are you kidding? You've had your fun. Now it's my turn."
--Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox, Friends, 1994
At the end of July, a group of girlfriends and I went back to school. The purpose of this mid-summer meeting was officially to clean out our old apartments and move into our new apartments. The unofficial reason was to break in our new roommates and get together and giggle. We were all busy in our respective homes, but broke for lunch. We were excited about the coming year and shared stories about each other as new roommates.
“This morning,” my best friend Natty told us, smiling across the lunch table at her roommate, “Emily and I ate fruit salad and sipped pink lemonade while sitting on our balcony enjoying the view.” I caught my roommate Kelley’s eye and we both suppressed gagging motions. Who makes fruit salad and pink lemonade on moving day? Isn’t moving day about dirt and grime, and not eating until late at night when you order unhealthy take-out or pizza with so much grease it runs down your elbows? And who has time to sit leisurely on a balcony? Isn’t moving day about stress and crabbiness, and berating yourself for not being more organized? It’s not that I was jealous of Emily’s Martha Stewart abilities … well, except that I was. Kelley and I routinely had ice cream for breakfast, if we ate at all, because it was fast and easy and there was no clean-up if you ate out of the carton (which we did). For a moment I envisioned my roommate and I enjoying breakfast on our balcony. … But I’m no Julia Child. Diet Coke would be substituted for the pink lemonade, and instead of fruit salad there would be dry cereal, or if we were really lucky, enough clean bowls and spoons for Cocoa Puffs with milk. The breakfast of champions!
I was brought out of my reverie by a hacking cough from Kelley. As I pounded her on the back, I explained to Natty and Emily that that morning, we had had oven cleaner and Windex for breakfast as we were in the middle of cleaning. In reality we spent most of the time running from the kitchen to the balcony for clean air. “This trying not to die from asphyxiation stuff is tiring,” Kelley sighed after recovering. “I sure wish we had someone to make us pink lemonade and fruit salad,” I added wistfully. “Well,” Natty said, gazing fondly at her roommate, “that’s what happens when you have Emily as a roommate. We’re having some more when we get home.” They smiled indulgently at each other, and while Kelley swiped at some oven grease staining her shirt, I made a mental note to pick up some Scrubbing Bubbles on the way home. Mmm. Dessert.
