The Final Countdown
My roommate in college (and a couple of years afterward) was named Victor. He was a phenomenally nice guy, and I really couldn’t have asked for a better person with whom to share space. He was prompt with his rent, clean, polite… but every so often, a peculiar habit of his would manifest.
The first time that I fell victim to this oddity was on a Wednesday night. I had just returned from a club that I occasionally frequented, and I was feeling rather more exhausted than I had anticipated.
After trudging into my room and clumsily turning off the light, I flopped myself down on my bed – not even bothering to disrobe – and immediately fell asleep. Mere moments later, I was jarred awake by the sound of terrifying scream.
“Daaaaaaaaaah!” came Victor’s voice, only barely muffled by the wall. It had been high, loud, and seemingly desperate, prompting my sleep-addled mind to race into overdrive. Should I rush over and see if he needed help? Should I just ignore the shriek and go back to sleep?
I was halfway out of bed before I heard more noise coming from the other room… and as near as I could tell, the hollering included lyrics. Victor would belt out one line, then repeat it in a higher note as though imitating a shouting crowd:
“Like New Orleans! New Orleans! Detroit City! Detroit City! Dallas! Dallas! Pittsburgh P-A! Pittsburgh P-A! New York City! New York City! Kansas City! Kansas City! Atlanta! Atlanta! Chicago, and L.A.!“
Immediately following that recital – which was an excerpt from James Brown’s “Living in America” – I heard Victor’s voice sing along to the horn section, which included an explosive high note: “Daaaaaaaaah!“
Over the next hour or so, I learned firsthand that Victor occasionally liked to play the same fifteen seconds of a song over and over (and over and over) again. He was kind enough to do this while wearing headphones… but he was apparently so passionate about the music that he felt compelled to sing along.
As such, I was treated to the breakdown for “Living in America” something like two hundred times that evening before I finally managed to get back to sleep. A couple of weeks later, Victor became obsessed with the main run from “The Final Countdown.”
I’m a tolerant guy, and I’m pretty easygoing. Still, I had to be up at 4am the following morning, and that just wasn’t going to happen with my roommate screaming “Doodle-doo doo! Doodle doot-doot-doo!” over and over. I went over, knocked on his door, and politely asked him to keep things down for the night.
The poor fellow looked so embarrassed that I felt mortified on his behalf. Story credit: Reddit / RamsesThePigeon