A brief foray into solitary habitation, part 1

My first year living on my own was an interesting one. I grew up in the middle of nowhere so I didn't really have much experience driving in a big city and living near actual things to do (tailgating in the Winn-Dixie parking lot is the most popular Friday night activity where I'm from). My parents used to live in Tampa but at some point in their lives decided that they wanted to be away from the hustle and bustle of (city?) life, and moved to an area where the closest gas station was a half a freaking hour away and I could count the number of stoplights in the entire county on my hands. Growing up in such a rural area, I wasn't really used to being around a lot of like-minded people. Most of the kids I went to high school with spent their free time hunting and riding horses, while I spent most of mine skateboarding and playing video games. They took Ag classes and learned how to castrate bulls. They won rodeo competitions and came to school with these giant trophy belt buckles. Shit like that. Meanwhile here's Steve in his Jnco's, Kurt Cobain haircut and Primus t-shirt, standing in the corner trying not to get noticed by anyone.

I'm partially joking. It wasn't that bad. I had plenty of friends. It's just that, unless you have spent some time in a small southern town, you will never understand just how different it is than almost any other place you could live. Seriously. We moved to Bumfuck Wauchula when I was about seven, so I spent most of my elementary and all of my Middle/High School years there. Upon graduation I wanted nothing more than to get the heck out of there and never look back. I convinced my best friend at the time (we'll call him Phil, because, well that's his name) to go half on an apartment with me, I scored my first adult job at Busch Gardens operating a ride (that reminds me of another story that I'll save for a later post...oh god), and moved to Tampa. Temple Terrace to be exact - directly across from Busch Gardens and walking distance from my college.

Phil was dating some girl in another city at the time so I didn't see him for the first month or so of my little foray into solitary habitation. I had the whole place to myself and developed a really nice little routine that would become the framework for my eventual OCD. Get up, go to work for about six hours or so, come home, eat dinner, ride my bike to school (did I mention I didn't have a car at the time? Yeahhhhh, there was that), draw something stupid like a fruit basket or a wrought iron gate (I was studying graphic design), ride my bike back home, go to sleep. Rinse, repeat. Then Phil moved in and we started venturing out into the great wild open. That's when things began to go to shit.