Some roommate stories are about messes, noise or missing leftovers. This one is about a late-night scare that could have ended a friendship before it began. @kfunggg says it is an absolute miracle her first college roommate did not throw her out on the street, and that she is still apologizing to this day.
Her tale is funny, a little spooky and, in the end, a warm tribute to a roommate who stuck around.
@kfunggg
She had never lived with anyone before
She begins by explaining that before college she had never shared a living space with anyone. That meant she had no idea what she did in her sleep. All she knew about herself was that she was a heavy sleeper.
That changed one morning when her roommate asked a question that made her stop short: do you remember what happened last night? She had no idea what the roommate was talking about.
The layout of the room
To tell the story properly, she describes the setup. They lived in a suite, and their room was long and narrow. Her roommate’s bed was at the far end, while hers was toward the front and faced the door. That meant that whenever someone opened the door, light from the hallway fell right across her bed.
The 2 a.m. surprise
Her roommate was coming back to the room at about two in the morning, fumbling with her keys. When she opened the door and the hallway light spilled onto the bed, she saw her roommate sitting straight up in bed. The storyteller says she cannot remember whether her eyes were open, and then adds, with some horror, that if they were, that makes it worse.
The roommate’s reaction was understandable. She asked why on earth anyone was sitting up at that hour, and then she immediately closed the door. The storyteller says that if she had been in her roommate’s shoes, she would have slept in the lounge down the hall and not gone back in.
But the roommate collected herself and tried again. This time, when she opened the door, her roommate was lying flat and fast asleep, as if nothing had happened.
The next-morning conversation
The next day, the roommate told her what she had seen. The storyteller was stunned, since she had no idea she did anything like that. She says she would have warned her roommate before they ever agreed to live together if she had known. The roommate had known her less than a year, and by her estimate it was probably only a couple of months into living together. She figures most people in that spot would have decided she was a little crazy and never slept in the same room with her again.
Instead, they still talk about the story all the time. She is amazed her roommate did not simply drop her on the curb, and says that she actually wanted to be her roommate again.
A second room and a nightly log
The pair ended up sharing another room, with their beds even closer together. Her roommate was often up at odd hours, working on things such as coding, and the storyteller says her own peak activity during sleep was around two in the morning. That is when her roommate started keeping a log in her notes app.
The next day there would be an entry with the time and what she did, something like staring at her hands and rubbing them in a menacing way. Now that she is home from college and living alone, she no longer has that log, but she clearly treasures the memory.
She calls her old roommate a real one for keeping her around. She also nods to a separate roommate story that her followers may already know. Her closing words are a shout-out to the roommate who stayed, because if the roles had been reversed, she says she would have been gone.
What makes a good roommate
Roommate stories usually serve as warnings, so it is refreshing to hear one that celebrates patience. The roommate in this story did several things right. She did not panic for long, she checked again and she raised the topic calmly the next morning instead of letting it fester. Then she turned a spooky moment into a running joke that the two of them could share.
If you are heading off to share a space, whether in a dorm, an apartment or a retirement community, there are a few lessons worth taking from that. Be upfront about habits you know about, and be curious about the ones you do not. If a roommate tells you something surprising about yourself, listen without getting defensive. If you are on the receiving end of something unsettling, a calm conversation the next day is almost always better than a silent grudge.
It also helps to build small routines that make life together easier: an agreement about quiet hours, a shared calendar, and a kind way to say when something is bothering you. Humor helps, too. Plenty of the best friendships begin with a moment that could have gone another way.
The takeaway
Not every roommate story ends in a move-out. Sometimes it ends with a second shared room, a notes-app log and years of laughing about it. For a woman who says she would have fled in the same situation, the lesson is gratitude. If someone stays with you after seeing you at your strangest, hold on to them.
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