Cowardice

In college I had a roommate that no one in my house liked. We found him on Craigslist and he was a graduate student. He was a Democrat and watched Fox News after a day of classes. He had Swiss citizenship and cooked meals for other international students (girls) and then took them down to his room to sleep with.

I lived in the basement across the hall from him and another roommate lived down the hall. We all shared a bathroom that no one cleaned.

After several months, the carbon monoxide alarm began going off in the basement. Eventually I got tired of the noise and so detached the alarm from the ceiling and placed it on the front stoop.

Several days and nights passed, and everyone in the basement slept quite soundly.

Coming in through the front door one day, the Swiss roommate finally noticed the smoke detector. "Hey, why is this out here?" he asked.

I was playing video games. "Because the CO alarm keeps going off."

"How long has the detector been outside?"

"Since Sunday."

He did not pick up the smoke detector or bring it back in the house. He just walked back to the kitchen to make some pasta.

He almost never washed the pans.