When I was maybe three or four years old, my mother thought it would be a good idea to move my bed into my brother’s room and combine our bedrooms into one. That’s the thing about having children; you can do these little experiments on them, moving bedrooms and shaking up the social order, and the only consequence is lifelong psychological damage. The reason, at least on its face, was to have a separate room just for toys and games and activities, but I think secretly, her aim was to facilitate bonding between my brother and me. Brothers who sleep in the same room must, she naively thought, grow an unspeakable fellowship.

I was too young to care all that much, but my brother, who is six years older, found the entire arrangement utterly unacceptable (as he should have, if we’re being honest), and conspired against it from its very inception. On the first night, just after my mother kissed us good night, turned out the lights, and shut the door, and just as she walked to her own room, admiring her success, my brother sat up in his bed and began whispering a string of terrifying mumblings in my direction. He warned me of clowns that would kill me in my sleep, and werewolves that would devour the remains, and in the morning, there would only be a pile of blood and bones left for Mom and Dad to find in my stead.

I lay there with my eyes as open as they could be, staring at the ceiling, wondering how exactly the clowns would kill me, and if I would feel anything while the werewolves tore my limbs apart, and whether Mom and Dad would scream when they found what was left of me, and finally, I let out a shriek. My brother quickly fell into a sleeping position, and my mother came running back to find my shivering body in a cold sweat for apparently no reason, unable to speak. This went on, uninterrupted, for at least seven whole nights, until finally my mother realized her experiment had failed and relented, pushing my bed back into its room and restoring the rightful balance. But of course, the damage had been done.

Perhaps because of this, I have always placed precious value on my personal space. I rather like having my own bedroom, and spent most of my childhood cultivating a sanctuary. And indeed, I made it all the way to college before ever having to think about sharing my bedroom with another person again. In fact, avoiding having a roommate was a reason I considered not going to college at all. The idea of having to compromise a fundamental part of my worldview for the sake of education was almost too much to handle.

•  •  •