Welcome to the Batcave!

My college years were probably one of the best times in my life and when I think about them now, I can't help but laugh at all of the good times my friends and I had. Looking at pictures of my sophomore year dorm room that I shared with my best friend Tori sparked so many memories, including our keen sense of home decor. What can we say? It was the year 2000, the Millennium, Y2K, the year of the hot pink zebra? Needless to say, we were super girly girls who loved to match and had to keep everything in order. I don't know about Tori, but I am still the exact same way now that I was back then. I get home from work, a trip, shopping, etc. and I have to put everything away in its place immediately. That's how we were as roommates- everything had its place and everything had to be put back in that place no matter what. Even when we would come back from the bar drunk, we managed to put our clothes and bags away. And yes, it amazed us every time we would wake up the next morning. Our parents would be so proud!

But for some reason we were always so jealous of our girlfriends who had clutter everywhere. You know the type...you get into this friend's car and have to move aside a few pairs of shoes and a tennis racket to find your seat belt. Or you walk into their dorm room and see books, clothes and makeup all over their bed and desk. For some reason, this was always so appealing to Tori and I because it was the total opposite of who we were, You know the old saying, 'you always want what you don't have' and goddammit, we just wanted to be messy! So one night we decided that for an entire week, we wouldn't put anything back in its place. We also felt the need to pull down the blinds for that whole week and rename our dorm room 'The Batcave.' Don't ask.

We stuck to our plan for the next few days and when we got back from class, we would drop our books in the middle of the room and throw our jackets on the bed. After we would go out, we would toss our clothes on the floor and leave our makeup sprawled out all over the dresser. It felt nice for the first day or so but then I could tell Tori was becoming anxious and I was ready to crawl out of my skin. Almost simultaneously midway through the first week, we looked at each other, screamed and started cleaning our room like crazy. We pulled up the shades and the Batcave was no more. Who did we think we were? Our experiment failed and we never spoke about the few days of clutter again.