Living With People Is a Game of Wits

In case you didn't know I like to write and one day, when I'm all grown up, I want to be a full-time writer. And, like most students and poor, struggling writers, I live in a shitty - although not-so-shitty in comparison to last year - house with two fine gentlemen who also want to be full-time writers. Their names are Sam and Dom. 

We are writers therefore we are hermits. One week in the middle of February I left to go to work. It was a Monday and Sam was sitting in his favourite spot in the living room - one of the chairs, direct access to the TV, his laptop on his lap. He was wearing jogging bottoms and had a mug of chocolate milk next to him. He waved me goodbye. I returned, five hours later, to find him in the same spot with a few additions: a plate with a brown smudge on it (food, I presume), an empty glass and a few chocolate wrappers. This continued. He sat in the chair, at his laptop, typing his novel, the TV on. By the end of the week he had turned into a gnome, only he talked and demanded the mess would be cleared. I nodded only with the acceptance that he had been working. 

We three like to do things differently. I don't like to wash my dishes properly. Dom doesn't like to do things quietly. Sam doesn't like cleaning up after himself. And here comes the game of wits. "The game," Dom said one day, "where there's no prices in those that take part, only those that win."

The Game of Wits

The Bin

So you've just finished a chocolate bar and the wrapping is in your hand. You go to put it in the recycling bin which is already over-flowing but you pop it on top. What's a little wrapper gonna do? Then you return and notice that somebody has put more stuff on top of your wrapper so you put your stuff on top of theirs because they were technically the ones who made that overflowing mess. Then you come back and the bin is still overflowing - the cheeky chocolate egg you ate, its wrapper now on the ground - so you pull the bag up as a hint. On your return, the pulled up bag now has several new additions, each as large and gaunt as the ones before it. The hint was not a "take me out" hing but a "get as much crap in me" hint, they think. So you take it out. You lose. One point to them. Zero to you.

The DVD

So you notice the DVD you left in the player last night is now sitting vicariously on the coffee table, abandoned, unloved, exposed. You didn't put it there. Someone else did. And you want to continue watching that episode of Friends. You open the drawer and a new DVD slides out. Watchmen. It's not yours. So you take it out and put it on the coffee table. Abandoned, unloved, exposed. The next day the same thing has happened only this time it's your Scream DVD that you had been watching last night. You look from the coffee table to the case on the shelf, inches away. You open the drawer and Watchmen is there again - obviously not finished on its first watch. You take it out and put it on the coffee table. The game goes on. No winners....until someone gives up.

The Dish You Need

So you three devised a plan: to avoid confusion you're going to put your dirty dishes in one area of the kitchen, each assigned to one of you. One night, you decided you're going to make fajitas. A knife and a chopping board is on your list of equipment. You look around and spot them - dirty and used. They're not in your corner of the kitchen therefore they're not yours to wash. But you're hungry and want to have fajitas. So you wash it. One point to them. But when you're done you put it back in his part of the kitchen. One point to you. 

The game goes on and on. It's a game of wits, after all. Good luck and play safe!