College kids are like desert nomads - mostly because they drink lots of (alcoholic) fluids and don't know where they're going. During the summer, nomadic college students actually form themselves into small tribes, hoping to find the cheapest sublease in town.
These tribes are made up of roommates, housemates, hall mates, whatever you want to call them. Usually the tribal members don't know each other before the summer. This situation, known as survival of the fittest, often leads to at least one guy being killed or seriously maimed by the others.
This almost happened last summer to one of my housemates, whom we will call "Rudy Roommate." R. R. decided it would be a cool idea to have his mom and sister live in the house and share his bedroom - for two months.
This would have been okay with us, except R. R.'s mom and sister weren't guys. And they weren't college students.
R.R. said nothing about why his family was crashing with us for practically the entire summer. Maybe he actually thought it was normal behavior to stuff his family into a single bedroom, with his mom snuggled up next to him on a full-sized bed and his sister curled up on the wooden floor inside a sleeping bag.
The situation got weirder after R. R.'s long-term guests insisted on leaving the front door open wide enough to let a compact car drive into our living room.
But this never happened - instead, giant, blood-sucking man-o'-war bugs flew inside. I think R. R.'s family had some sort of mutation that protected them from the blood-sucking parasites. Or maybe they were blood-sucking parasites. Anyway, the giant bugs that came through the door didn't bother them at all.
We watched in horror as our unwanted guests quickly evolved from parasitic organisms to an unsophisticated form of rodent. They began stockpiling all sorts of essential household items, like toilet paper and telephone handsets. Either R. R. and his family were cheap, or they really liked chatting with friends while making plopping sounds in the bathroom.
The resident rodents eventually suspected us of stealing their stores of food. For example, they marked their milk jug after every use to make sure the rest of us didn't take any. They also hid plates and forks in their bedroom and kept the bedroom locked at all times.
Things got really nasty when the rodents refused to pay a dime of R. R.'s monthly rent after they had already stayed in the house for six weeks. This is where threats of serious maiming came in very handy.
Actually, we didn't say we'd kill them. We just politely attached a note to their bedroom door with a machete. They got the idea. And they paid.
Hopefully your nomadic summer adventures will never involve throwing knives at doors - there are other ways to take care of annoying housemates or unwanted guests.
If you think they're stealing your food, for example, you might try buying expired groceries for a week or two. When that doesn't work, kill something and leave it in your refrigerator.
Sometimes it's necessary to take more drastic measures. A well-tested strategy is to monopolize the television. Program the TV so that it can only play old reruns of "Days of Our Lives." (The password for the television should be a word your annoying housemate would never think of, such as "fraggle," "JEM" or "Mmmbop.") Then sit in front of the television and make strange noises while talking to yourself. This should keep your housemate away for long periods of time.
If you are lucky enough to be out of town for the summer, that means you're stuck trying to find nomads who will pay your rent for you. This can be very difficult, especially since nomadic students try to pay the lowest rent possible.
Your problem is already solved if you have a rich roommate - just find the most annoying people you know and slip them a couple bucks. Introduce them to your roommate and say they'll be staying for the summer. Your roommate will pay the rent himself, rather than agree to share the house. This is essentially blackmail, but it's better than actually finding renters.
Another quick strategy is to entice renters with phrases like "free Internet" (house phone line) and "washer/dryer" (the kitchen sink and a blow dryer). When potential renters ask where these things actually are, distract them by pointing out that you have a 10,000-watt microwave.
Once you trick some nomadic students into signing a sublease agreement, you're all set. You can look forward to summer away from college. But you can bet the nomadic tribe will be one fewer when you get back.
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