A few weeks ago, my roommates and I sat around the table and started eating our family dinner. It’s a ritual we created last semester as a way to unwind from our busy days and spend quality time together. Sometimes wine glasses sit beside our pasta plates; other nights, we mash together guacamole and nachos. I don’t remember what was on the menu that night, but I do remember the conversation or at least part of it.
We talked about the foods we liked and didn’t like and how two of my roommates were picky eaters. No one knew how many foods they didn’t like until we started making dinners together. I shared with the table that I loved burnt kettle corn, and they looked at me like I had just told them I enrolled in the space force. I explained that I didn’t want the whole kernel to be burnt, only the inside. I assured them that it was a complicated process that I perfected over the last 11 years (I acquired this taste in the fourth grade). Then, I convinced them to try the delicacy after dinner.
Once we did the dishes and the kitchen was clean, I reached for the kettle corn. One friend asked me why I didn’t use buttered popcorn, and I told her that no homemade popcorn could rival movie theater popcorn, so what would be the point?
I proceeded to put the bag into the microwave and waited for it to pop. The trick was to leave the bag in for a few extra seconds once the popping stopped. I stopped the microwave and restarted it several times before I felt confident the kernels reached perfection. I opened the bag, poured the white kernels with the blackened insides into the clear bowl and looked to my roommates with hope in my eyes. They all took a kernel and tasted the magic. Except, they didn’t think it was so magical. They didn’t spit it out or say it tasted terrible, but I ended up finishing the bowl of popcorn on my own.
I found the entire situation to be interesting. Two of my roommates have been my best friends for eight years, and the other has been part of our quartet for the last three. Yet, no one knew that I adored burnt popcorn. We could recall stories from middle school, high school and college. I witnessed the embarrassing moments, the defeats and the triumphs. But my burnt popcorn obsession had remained a private detail until we all moved in together.
That isn’t to say my roommates didn’t know me well. They knew I didn’t eat shrimp, felt ill at the sight of mayonnaise and hadn’t tasted a cheeseburger in years. But if living together taught us anything, it’s that there is always more to learn about a person.
Our late-night conversations and weekend adventures reveal more hopes and dreams that I hadn’t yet discovered in our years of friendship. It’s a privilege to watch the people I love grow and evolve.
When we were in high school, one of our teachers warned us that living with our best friends would be a mistake. She told us horror stories about girls who lived together and grew to hate each other over the course of a few months. For that reason, my best friends and I didn’t live together for our first two years of college. We felt that we were ready for the experience by the time year three rolled around.
Now, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Amid a pandemic, it’s comforting to have the friends I rely on most in the rooms next to mine. Our adventures, dinners and conversations have brought us closer together, not farther apart. Each day is an opportunity to learn something new about each other, support one another in a new way or gain new experiences as a group. Who knows, maybe tonight at dinner, I’ll tell them about the time I got my head stuck in a garage door.