A pic from TV reporting days. One of two good hair days in my life. The other was when I was in grade 12.

Okay. I’m going to pretend I’m a news reporter and no I don’t miss reporting. Or newsrooms. Or the people who manage newsrooms.

I’ve been assigned a story to write. About a personal experience (read: nightmare) someone had. Concerns a roommate who had to be endured for seven nights in very tight quarters. A roommate whose personality was creepy and unpredictable. A roommate who hadn’t heard of TMI.

These are facts to be included in the story. Includes quotes from roommate:

• Roommate is rich. A business owner (for real, Tank fact checked). Possibly self made. Maybe divorce settlement money. Is no dummy, but so clueless and thoughtless.
• Four times divorced. Married third husband at age 27. Has restraining order preventing fourth husband from contact. Apparently tried to kill her. Lives alone. Usually spends Christmas alone. Has full-time housekeeper.
• A Stepford Wife. Wanders around in a trace-like state, clutching a cup of tea. Asks you a question. You answer it. Looks blankly at you. Then, re-asks the question. As if she didn’t hear your answer the first time she asked.
• Spends $1500+ USD per month for injectable human growth hormone. Also takes hormone replacement and testosterone. “I have the body of a 35-year old.” Botox, restylane, juvederm. Puffy Lisa Rinna-esque lips. “I Brazilian wax.”
• Has a “lifetime commitment” with a probably married travel-industry employee who lives in another city. Describes her beau as a spoiled, demanding whiny baby. When they fight he disappears for months. When he told her he hated her dogs she got rid of them.
• Has adult children she said she didn’t really raise. For their own good. “I always had nannies.” Estranged from two step-children, whose childhood antics include laying down a sheet of gunpowder on the hardwood floor in the house. Then, lighting it. Then, ending up in hospital.
• Has daughter in her early 40’s married to a pension-aged rich guy with adult children. Together, they have pre-school aged twins, “monsters who throw their toys in your face.”

“Surely Tank, you’re making up these facts,” you say.
Tank is NOT a fiction writer.