by Jared Logan, Blerds Estate Manager

Once, I had this roommate in college who was really into movies. Most male college students are. This guy came home one day with a DVD copy of Magnolia starring Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly.  He had just bought it.

“Man I can’t wait to watch this!” said this roommate.  “I LOVED it when I saw it in the theater. Too bad I have to go to work right now.  I’ll watch it when I get home.”

His other roommate and myself announced our intention to watch the film while he was at work.  We hadn’t seen it and we had a free evening with nothing to do.

“Uhhhh.  I’d really rather you not watch it without me,” said the roommate that had bought the movie.

“Why?” we asked.

“Well, it’s just that it’s mine.  And I bought it.   And I really want to be the first one to watch it” was his reply. 

“You’ve already seen it,” I said.

“Yes, I have,” he said.

“We haven’t seen it,” said his other roommate.

“I know,” he said.  “But we can all watch it together when when I get home.”

“But we want to watch it now,” I said.

“Yes, I understand that,” he said.

“We don’t want to sit and watch it with you,” said his other roommate.  “We don’t really like you.”

“Ha ha,” said the roommate who owned Magnolia.  He thought that was a joke.

“We’ve got nothing to do tonight and we were thinking about watching a movie,” I said.

“Watch another movie,” said the roommate who owned Magnolia.

“But we’re your friends,” I said, thinking that since logic had failed I would appeal to his general good nature.

“We’ll watch it when I get home,” he said.

“You’ll be gone eight hours,” I said.  “Just let us watch the movie while you’re gone.  It’ll still work when you put it into the machine when you get home.”

“That’s not the point!” he said.  He was starting to get upset.  “The point is that I want to be the first one to watch it!”

“But you’ve already seen it,” said his other roommate.

“Not this copy!  I haven’t watched this copy!” he shouted. He was suddenly shouting. “This copy that I bought!  I want to be the first one to watch this copy!  I want to be the first one to peel the plastic packaging off!  I want to be the first one to pop it out of the case and put it in the DVD player!  I want to be the first one to see this in my house.  Because I bought it and it’s mine!!!!!”

“So you’re a lunatic,” I said.  “That’s your reason for not letting us watch it?  You should have just said ‘I’m a lunatic.’”

“I suddenly don’t really want to watch it anymore” said his other roommate.

“Me niether”  I said.

“Okay,” the roommate who owned the DVD said, “We’ll watch it when I get home.”

He did.  We didn’t. We were a little embarrassed at his outburst.

I did watch Magnolia alone later and for a little while I’m pretty sure I thought it was my favorite movie, but now I’m not sure why I thought that.  It’s not that great, you know?  It’s just some movie, really.

Some people are very weird about ownership of their stuff.  That Magnolia-loving roommate certainly was. 

I had cousins on my Dad’s side who behaved this way as well.  When you went to their home, and looked in the refridgerator, all the different 2-liter bottles of soda in the fridge had someone’s name written on them in magic marker.  “That’s my Sprite,” my cousin pointed out to me when I pulled the wrong bottle from the fridge, “Laurie said you could have her Sprite.  It’s in the back.”  

How did they live like this?  You had to be a U.N. conflict negotiator to get a granola bar in that household. “Okay, Laurie agrees to loan Mary two cans of mountain dew if, and only if, Jason agrees to withdraw his fishsticks from the freezer to make room for Laurie’s icy pops.  Jason will do that in exchange for rights to eat from Mary’s bag of Ruffles potato chips.”

At my house we had to share.  Everything.  My father would eat everything on his plate and then start eating off of my plate and my brother’s plate.  “Hey!” we’d whine, “That’s my food!” 

“Share,” he’d grunt between bites.

When we were getting ready for elementary school and there wasn’t enough clean laundry because my mom had worked a week of night shifts, she’d walk into my room, grab one of my shirts and put it on my brother.  “Hey, that’s my shirt!” I squealed the first couple times. 

“Share,” she’d say.  “We share in this household.”

And toys?  All the toys belonged to me AND my brother.  And any other kid that happened to wander in off the street.  Some poor lady who went to our Church would bring her disgusting brats over and they could manhandle my He-Man action figures with their snot-crusted little paws as much as they wanted.  Because I had to share.  I was commanded to share.  When the church lady and her rugrats left later I’d do an inventory and, inevitably, a figurine or accessory would be missing.  “Mom!” I’d bawl, “Those kids took Skeletor’s staff!”

“They’ve got nothing, Jared,” my Mom would say, “You’re going to begrudge them a tiny piece of plastic?  Just share.”

Share. Share. Share. 

I’m not bragging that my family was morally superior or anything.  In fact, my family’s share-everything policy is just as flawed as the “what’s mine is mine” mercenaryism of the roommate with the DVD.  My family shared so much that when I hit college, I operated under the mistaken assumption that “sharing” meant you could borrow anything from anyone who lived in your house without asking. 

I’d eat my roommate’s frozen pizzas.  I’d take books off their shelf and read them, forgetting to return them.  I’d even wear my roommate’s clothes.

“Is that my shirt?” the DVD roommate asked me one day while I was wearing his shirt.  “Yeah,” I said, “What’s wrong? You don’t share?”

He had to explain to me that what I was doing was actually called “stealing.” 

But I didn’t think so.  And, to me, it really was a two-way street.  I honestly wouldn’t mind if he or my other roommate went into my room and grabbed some clothes to wear,  or borrowed a book without asking and never gave it back.  If I had some change laying on the table, they could take it.  No big whoop.  But my roommates never did any of these things.  Because to them that was obviously stealing.

And there was another reason: I didn’t have any cool stuff you’d want to borrow or take.  All of the groceries I bought were the cheapest, nastiest, most generic brand I could find.  In some grocery stores there’s the generic brand that still has a company and a logo, maybe a mascot, and then there’s the store’s generic brand, which is even a step down from generic.  That’s the brand I would buy.

All of my books were missing pages.  All of my CDs were scratched.  My clothes all had cartoon characters on them and were torn and worn out.  Everything I had was ruined from years of borrowing it out to people and not getting angry if the stuff was returned damaged.  Of course I didn’t mind if anyone borrowed any of it.  It was easy to feel that way when nobody ever asked to borrow it.

In the end, it’s really all economics.  I came from a slightly lower tax bracket than my roommates or my cousins who wrote their names on soda bottles.  When you’re poor, you have to share.  All the poor people have to pull their resources just to get through life. If you’re poor, you’ve got to borrow your brother’s suit, your uncle’s car, and your neighbor’s computer just to get ready for a job interview to make some money in the first place.  It’s only when you have money that ownership starts to take on meaning.  When I went to college I was like Pochahontas sent to live among the English.  I was suddenly around all these people who had a very different definition of property.  “What is this ownership you speak of, White Man?  The pizzas of the fridge are given to us by the Great Spirit who provides for us all.”

Although I’ve since learned the error of my ways (I respect other people’s property and, incidentally, don’t wear shirts with cartoon characters on them anymore) I still think that there are people out there in the world who take ownership a little too seriously.  Like, I’m always amazed when someone won’t bum somebody else a cigarette. If you’ve got more than one cigarette on you, just go ahead and bum the cigarette.  What?  It’s that important to you that you die first? 

And speaking of pizzas, I once got drunk at a buddy’s house and passed out on his couch, awakening in the morning to see him sitting in an armchair a couple feet away with a pizza box on his lap.  There was a half a pizza in that box - six slices, easy.  We all know that cold pizza is one of the best ways to recover from a hangover, and I couldn’t resist.  But when I reached over to grab a slice, my buddy slapped my hand away.  “This is my pizza,” he said, “I bought it.  Tell me why I should give you a slice.”

The only answer I could think of was “We’re both 26 years old?”

31/05/2007
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