Shockingly, This Didn’t Happen at The Ranch…
The years we spend in college, we end up learning more life lessons than any other time in our lives. It is the first time most of us are living on our own and learning to navigate the world without parental guidance. The lessons we gain during this period of time can come from many different sources, the academic world, restaurant work, or simply bizarre life experiences. I happened to have a profound learning experience through an unfortunate life experience recently; getting evicted from my home of two years. I learned more in just two hours of my life about how to handle things as a mature adult than I had ever previously known.
It all started during our final walkthrough which my roommate Roxanne’s parents decided to join us for. The build up to our eviction revolved around Roxanne calling in home inspectors to try and get our house deemed uninhabitable, for reasons that are still beyond me. With this being the case, I am sure you can imagine the animosity that filled the room. This was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life.
The situation was tenuous to begin with, and I was trying my hardest to keep my mouth shut and stay out of it. Throughout the walkthrough, Roxanne and her parents kept making comments regarding the poor quality of the house directly to Kevin (my previous landlord). Roxanne’s mother kept asking Kevin when a carpet had been replaced, or when the walls had been painted last, when finally Kevin said, “this is a final walk through, not an interrogation. I will no longer be answering any of your questions.” This is when Roxanne’s mother decided it would be a good idea to tell me to ask Kevin her questions. I am a 20 year old student who didn’t want to be a part of this to begin with, and the fact that she couldn’t comprehend that blew me away. I had no clue what to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. After this, I decided it would be a better idea for me to just go and sit outside, trying to remove myself from the situation.
I soon found Roxanne’s father sitting outside with me, so we shared a few cigarettes and had a long conversation about basic human decency. Before I knew it, an hour had flown by, and the rest of the walkthrough participants were all standing outside with us. I breathed a sigh of relief, this insanely stressful period of my life was about to come to an end. Boy was I wrong. Kevin served us a final letter addressing our eviction ending by saying he found marijuana on the premises…
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an image that I will never forget. Roxanne’s father was violently shaking, with the letter in his hands soon being ripped apart. Everything happened so fast, I hardly had time to respond, but I soon found myself holding back a sixty five year old man from trying to attack our 45 year old landlord. Kevin being the antagonistic asshole that he is told Ken (Roxanne’s father) to, “fuck off” and things along these lines. I pulled Ken down to the sidewalk where he proceeded to scream at Kevin, “you god damn slumlord mother fucker!! Come here, I fucking want this!!”. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I simply froze up at this point. My attention was broken when two cop cars pulled up. It was at this point that I decided to get the hell out of there.
There was something so powerfully disturbing about seeing two grown men act like wasted assholes you’d expect to find at the ranch. It took awhile for me to process all that had happened, but I took a few things away from it. If I ever have children, I will under no circumstance let them see me the way that Roxanne saw her father. Also sometimes life throws you curveballs, and you have to deal with shitty people in unfortunate situations, but that doesn’t mean you can act the way that these two men acted that day.
