Sophomore Stories Part VII "The Salad"

Something like this has happened to most people...this is what happened to me.

My roommate my sophomore year was James. He is a tremendous roommate. Very little snoring. No stealing. Relatively clean. Will always listen and he let me play his guitar all year. He is the best roommate I had in college, no question.

Late in our first semester, James had begun dating a girl (I think her name was Heather). Since James, like all of us, had very little money, he decided to play up the 'I'm poor' angle by making Heather dinner in our dorm room. There is still some mystery for me as to how he accomplished this since there is no stove in our room, just a microwave, and no plates or eating utensils of any kind. Anyway, James politely asks me to be somewhere else on this particular Saturday night as I would definitely be a third wheel in a 12x12 room with two beds. No problem for me...I happily oblige him and vacate the premises at the prearranged time.
Unfortunately, we never settled on an 'ending' time, which I understand because if the date goes well, you never know when it might end...or not end.
My memory tells me the date went very well in so much as I was locked out of my room until after midnight. It is my personal belief that nothing promiscuous was going on as I know James well and he was/is a man of character but that he and Heather wanted to be alone and for me to quit knocking on the door (I was admittedly annoying that night)
Like anyone would, James cleans up his homemade dinner stuff and places everything where it would go...the croutons took their place next to the Pop-Tarts, the leftover non-alcoholic champagne was by the other beverages and the rest of the salad that James had prepared was put in the refrigerator. Everything was rosy.

When the students leave between semesters, the dorm residents are asked to unplug all sensitive electronic equipment, i.e. computers, televisions, and refrigerators! The Department of Student Housing cuts off electricity for those three weeks or so to save power and anything you leave plugged in will forcibly be turned off because of a lack of electricity.

I forgot to clean out the refrigerator before I left.

It was my fault. I was there until the last day you could occupy the dorms that semester. I should have done it, I didn't and the consequences were severe.

The smell hit me as soon as I opened the door. A stench I knew would only get worse when I opened the small refrigerator.
When I did, I saw the lettuce and other salad items only they were several different shades of brown and black. After I discarded the rotting produce, I thoroughly cleaned the refrigerator and opened our door and windows to let the smell out.

James noticed when he returned from Winter Break the next day. I apologized and told him I was working on a solution. The problem was the smell had been absorbed by everything in the room! Our bed sheets, our couch, our carpet, our clothes...it took a couple of weeks before the smell wasn't constant. And of course the refrigerator was never the same. It was unfortunately discarded at the end of the semester...lesson learned.