Old West Tales - Enter TPYG

For an introduction to Old West Tales, click here: Old West Tales - Introduction

I put Brian, the goldfish, in some sort of container of tapwater and headed back to Chapel Hill for second semester. One morning, early in the semester, a guy walks into our room with a laundry basket full of stuff, and starts unloading it.

What are you doing?

My name is Richard King, I am your roomate....

Sure enough, the student housing conspiracy continued and we had been assigned a new roomate in the middle of the year.

Let's just say that Rich didn't fit in with Vic and me. Rich was tall and thin and frail looking. He had wispy white hair and lilly white skin. I immediately nicknamed him The Pale Young Gentleman, after a character that tried to fight Pip in the Great Expectations Cliff Notes.

Rich claimed to be from Raliegh, but he was originally from Chicago and had yankee dorkiness. Rich said "Basically...." and "Alls I'm Saying ..." alot. Rich wore bright colored windbreakers like royal blue with orange piping.

Rich didn't drink or party at all, he was into Japan.

Rich was an extremely quiet person. Which isn't to say that he never talked, just that he could move around and go about his business without making a sound. You would often forget that he was even in the room. Rich wore pajamas. At night or while napping, I would often catch a glimpse of a thin figure gliding silently across the room like an apparition.

Rich had a hard time getting up in the morning and had about 4 or 5 different alarms that would go off.

Rich hardly ever ate. He didn't seem to like food. He would buy a sub sandwich from the student union and live off of it for days. He would occasionally pull the sub out of the mini-fridge, un-wrap it, and then carefully carve off a translucent sliver and eat it, all without making a sound.

Rich was a spectator who was entertained by our personalities and antics. He liked to eavesdrop on other conversations but rarely participated. Rich seemed to have no friends at all, at least none ever came by our room. I am sure that the only time he ever spoke to girls is when our friends or girlfriends would come over. The girls thought it was funny to watch Rich grin and blush when they asked him something about Japan.

Don't get me wrong, guys liked to come by and make fun of Rich also. We always encouraged even marginal smokers to light-up when they swung by the room; the fun was to see if Rich had the balls to protest.

Rich had expensive Paul Mitchell hair styling products that we liked to hide around the room.

Vic and I liked to play loud music and Rich didn't care for devil music. Strangely, AC/DC and Black Sabbath became my favorite bands that semester

Vic and Rich did not get along at all. They were constantly arguing. The ongoing disagreement went something like this:

Rich = "Vic, your problem is, you decide right away that people are either cool or a pussy --- cool, or a pussy. And that's it."

Vic = "That's right Rich."

This infuriated Rich as he fell on the wrong side of Vic's first impression. Rich tried all semester to gain our acceptance, and when he ultimately failed ....