By Justin Adam Brown

jbrown@timesleader.com

Justin convinced his roommates a trashy single mother would take over his lease when they brought dogs home.
http://www.theweekender.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_WHITEtrash1.jpg.optimal.jpgJustin convinced his roommates a trashy single mother would take over his lease when they brought dogs home. Photo credit: Pinterest

I’ve had more roommates over the years than a foster child. Though I may try, I will never forget any of them. Judging by the stunt I pulled on the two football players I lived with my last year of college, they will never forget me, either. This is a story I still laugh about to this day.

It was a Tuesday night and I was getting home after a long night of bartending. As I was making my way through my pitch-black living room, I walked right into an unfamiliar object. When I turned on the lights, I saw a cage with two puppies inside.

Call me crazy, but when you share a house with football players, and you come home to find caged dogs, you can’t help but think of Michael Vick.

My jaw dropped.

Why were there dogs in my living room? My roommates were well aware that our landlord made me send the chihuahua I bought after I got drunk at a trailer park to live with my parents. Why would they bring home dogs? Were they engaging in an insidious underground crime scene?

The next morning would reveal the puppies were “our new pets.”

Now as long as my roommates were in the company of a Four Loko and grape-flavored blunts, they were cool. They were my boys and all, but other than that, they thought being college football players meant they were entitled to modify the rules.

“They have to go!” I demanded.

“Like hell. You’re not my parent,” whined one of my roommates.

“Fine, then I’m moving out,” I bluffed.

They didn’t believe me. However, as someone once diagnosed as an instigator with a manner for mischief by a reality-television producer, I was about to make certain they did.

About a week later, an older Sigma sister who graduated a few years earlier called and told me she was in the area and that she wanted to get a drink. I told her she had to pretend to be a trashy single mom taking over my lease, so I could get back at my roommates for thinking they could do whatever they wanted.

She didn’t even question it.

She came in and toured the house, making my roommates nearly shit their pants.

Between faking a series of argumentative phone calls to her “baby daddy” about how to handle her daughter Princess Beyonce, and claiming she was a 30-something bisexual on a meth binge with an abusive ex, my roommates were livid that I was having her take over my lease.

“Listen here you son of a bitch, I’m down here at the college looking at a house,” she screamed into the phone. “If she’s teething just give her some whiskey or Bud Light. Figure it out, you f — ing troll. Now stop calling me or I really will chop off your dick this time. And if you even think of touching my weed, I’ll give myself a black eye and tell the cops you did it.”

My roommates were horrified. I was just trying not to pee my pants enough for everyone to notice. Thank God I was wearing black basketball shorts that day.

I finally revealed the truth after one of my roommates called his mom in angry tears, screaming, “Mom, I’m not living with an old lady with kids! Do something!”

For some reason, he didn’t laugh as much as I did about it.

Reach Justin at 570.991.6652 and follow him #PartyLikeAJournalist on Instagram @justinadambrown