There were six of us living in an apartment together. Five girls and one guy. The guy was illegally living in our apartment with his super jealous girlfriend. Of course this is a recipe for disaster. Two of the girls were new, they had just moved in over the summer and would begin living with us full-time when the semester started. The four of us who had lived there previously did not know them very well, so we decided to have some group activities to get to know one another better. We had meeting on Sunday night before school started to go over the ground rules. One of the girls, we'll call her Lindsay, was running late and entered the meeting halfway through. We were just chatting about chores, locking the door, having friends over, etc, however two of the original girls seemed particularly angry with Lindsay for leaving the door unlocked the previous night. Turns out it was unlocked when she left in the morning, but that's not particularly important. What is important, however, is that we were already being divided.
In the spirit of new roommate acceptance, we decided to have a family dinner. Unfortunately, Lindsay had a class the day and time chosen, and the other new girl Alice was just getting off work. Why we couldn't reschedule, I have no idea, but the other residents outnumbered us. Tuesday at 6 p.m. we would make tacos.
Monday came and went and before we knew it, it was Tuesday night. The girls and boy browned and seasoned the beef, toasted the shells, and gathered supplies, I shredded lettuce and cheese. Around 6:10, we were ready to sit down for dinner.
And right as we're about to dig in, the two unnamed girls began to take stabs at Lindsay, who wasn't even present. They would not stop complaining about how she refused to take part in our meal (she was at class) or flirted with the one's boyfriend (completely untrue). In a few minutes they had blown Lindsay's minor mistakes completely out of proportion to the point where one was in tears screaming at her boyfriend, the other is fuming and holding a fork like a spear, and the boyfriend is tired of arguing and storms out.
This left Alice and I staring at one another across the table wondering whether or not we should eat or wait. My stomach growled pretty loudly, I was absolutely starving. But it seemed rude to eat when the others were not present. The crying girl came back to the table and told us to start eating, but who can really eat when there's a domestic dispute going on? We sat there for twenty minutes before she finally called her boyfriend to apologize. Did she mean it? No. But it didn't matter. He came back and we ate our dinner. There was no conversation besides "could you please pass the cheese?"
I'm pretty sure one of us sent a text to Lindsay to warn her about the nuclear holocaust that occurred in the kitchen that night, she started to only come back to the apartment after the others had fallen asleep. I very rarely saw her during the day despite sharing the eastern half of the apartment and a bathroom with her.
The moral of this story: Taco nights are sacred around this area. Whether you go to the Pickle Bar for happy hour and 75 cent tacos or if you make your own, it's a great bonding experience. Words cannot describe the pain this event caused in our memories. What did Alice and I do to deserve being treated this way in our own home on such a cherished night? Taco Tuesday —the one evening we gather as a family, turn off the television, and enjoy beef tacos, together. But they brought shame on this house. Great shame. Instead of having a nice, pleasant evening, we had to spend hours comforting our roommates. Where the hell did they get off?
Taco Tuesday isn't an anything-goes–type atmosphere. Save that for Frisbee Friday.
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