Scarecrow decided to invite a few of our friends over last Friday for a BBQ. I was somewhat surprised that he took the initiative to do this. I decided to go with him to the grocery store because I figured if I didn’t he would screw it up. Once we got back to the house we unloaded the groceries and Scarecrow began to do something I have never seen him do, clean the house. Since this was his idea to have people over he felt that a dirty house would reflect poorly on him. He wiped down the counters, put away all of the dishes, and cleaned up the basement which was covered in empty beer cans from last week. The next morning things were back to normal. Scarecrow wasn’t going to help clean up the party he had thrown; he cleaned up the house the day before, so he shouldn’t have to do anything ever again.

Last Wednesday Scarecrow apparently had to give a presentation of a children’s story to deaf kids as part of his Sign Language class. I did not see him practice for this presentation at all. When I have a presentation for class, whether it be for my core classes or last year in German, I take time to go over the presentation and make sure I have it down. I rather not get up in front of people and look like and idiot even if they are little kids. Maybe I should give Scarecrow more credit; maybe he actually is good at sign language. That night he came home and told me he had decided he wasn’t going to go to class the next day because he had done the presentation that day. I told him just because he had to do work for a class once the whole year isn’t a valid reason to skip the next day. Scarecrow just shrugged and said he didn’t feel like going. This must mean under the Scarecrow reasoning, after the presentation of the business plan is over in November, I should get a good week off of school. I think I’m going to have to settle with Thanksgiving break.

I am not sure what Scarecrow’s class schedule looks like. I know he takes classes at Pima but I am not sure how many. I know he only has one class on Thursday and no classes on Friday, so I am guessing he is not taking more than three. He has told me that he is taking a general education class at the U of A, but I am still skeptical about this. Scarecrow is on his third year at Pima, and has only started this year to take classes that pertain to his major, American Sign Language. The reason that he has chosen sign language is because at his mom’s company they had to hire a sign language interpreter and paid them sixty dollars an hour so he felt that this would be something that he could do. In high school he was going to take sign language to meet his foreign language requirements because there was no way he was going to pass Spanish. His excuse for not being good at Spanish was that he couldn’t role his R’s. Every time Scarecrow would enroll in sign language in high school he would have to drop it because “it didn’t fit into his schedule.” It wasn’t until graduation was coming up that he decided that it was time he better get his foreign language requirement filled. He eventually had to hire a private tutor to get the credit he needed to graduate. I don’t understand what has made him decide that he should major in sign language if he couldn’t pass the elementary classes in high school.

I complain about how Scarecrow does nothing around the house and I will continue to do so. There is one thing that he does that no one else will do; he buys all the paper towels, red cups, and decorates the basement. It may not sound like much but paper towels and red cups are essentials that would go un-purchased otherwise. He has also gone out and bought many posters, as well as, Guinness signs and a clock, all in an effort to make the basement more appealing. To the rest of us in the house decorating the basement is our last priority, so to see that he has taken the initiative is nice. So far he has not asked any of us to reimburse him for these purchases, and I really hope he doesn’t. These few things are his only contributions to the house and I hope he realizes that; on the other hand, he is Scarecrow.

Scarecrow chooses when he feels like cleaning up after himself. For the most part he will throw away his trash and put away his dishes. However, there seems to be an ongoing trend of leaving cups around the house. Scarecrow’s things are easy to spot too, whether it is his Hansen’s Natural Soda or his Crush Orange Soda bottle. No one else in the house drinks these things so we all immediately know the culprit. After observing how his trash was always lying around we decided to do an experiment to see if he would ever throw his stuff away. The experiment started with his Crush Orange Soda bottle. He left it on the kitchen counter and we were going to leave it there until he threw it away. A week went by and the bottle was still sitting on the counter. We had people over and the counter was a mess. I cleaned everything off of the counter and wiped it down, but I left the bottle there. Still Scarecrow doesn’t throw it away. Another week goes by and I ask him to throw away his bottle that has been sitting there for two weeks now. Scarecrow tells me that two weeks is an exaggeration and walks by the bottle. Two more days go by and finally Lovy can’t take it anymore and throws it away. He asks Scarecrow if he was ever going to take some responsibility and clean up after himself; Scarecrow responds by telling Lovy that he was just trying to see how mad he could make us all.

Next time the bottle is going to be smashed in the middle of his room.

I am not exactly sure what is wrong with Scarecrow. I’m beginning to think that he is just unaware of his surroundings. It is like he is in his own world where nothing matters except what he is doing. Now it is not that he is conceited; he is just ignorant. For example, Scarecrow went to get groceries the other day, he came home and began to put everything away. After getting all of his stuff into the fridge he walks away, leaving the refrigerator door wide open with no intent of coming back to close it. Maybe when he lived at home he was spoiled so much by his mother that she would pick up after him and do simple tasks for him, like closing the refrigerator door. This type of oblivious action is what has led to the name Scarecrow: referring to The Wizard of Oz.

“If I only had a brain.”

When we moved in to our house there was a beer pong table already in the basement. It wasn’t anything special, so there was always talk about making our own. On Smitty’s 21^st birthday his destructive personality got a hold of him and he decided to demolish the table we had. Since Scarecrow has nothing else to do he stepped up for once and took the on the responsibility of creating a new beer pong table. Scarecrow and T-Lew, another friend from high school who also attends Pima, made it together. To my surprise Scarecrow went fifty-fifty with all the work of constructing the table, and didn’t let T-Lew do it all. I’m happy to say that they did a great job on it, and I don’t think Smitty will be able to destroy this one.

I am currently living in a house right next to campus with three roommates I went to high school with. First there is Smitty, I lived with him freshman year in the dorms and we made good roommates. What made this situation work is that we both had somewhat separate lives, so we were able to still remain close friends. Second there is Lovy, he graduated two years ahead of us, and is currently getting his Masters. Now our third roommate is Scarecrow; he is going on his third year at Pima, and taking his first class at the University of Arizona. When I was first approached about living with Scarecrow I was apprehensive. I have been friends with him for seven years and I knew that living with him was not going to work out. Let me describe my feelings in this way: When you take a road trip with good friends, you are around them all the time. The trip can last two days or it can last five days, but by the end of that trip you have pin pointed one of those friends that you just cannot stand anymore. Everything that they do begins to annoy you, and by this time it doesn’t matter what you try to do to ignore them you can’t. For me this friend is Scarecrow. He means well and he is a great friend, but I have found too many of his habits annoying. On top of these habits, new ones have begun to form that you can only learn by living with a person. In a way this blog is dedicated to Scarecrow: it is giving me a place to vent my frustration and letting him live another day without me lashing out.