During the course of the eleven months of Steve being my roommate, I discovered that Steve was afraid of many things- bees, spiders, work, a shower- but the thing that Steve was most afraid of was my friend and landlord's wife, Lucy. Steve was susceptible to the power of suggestion and a mutual friend of ours convinced Steve that Lucy had a red head's temper and would fly off the handle at the drop of the hat. They even went so far as to tell him that her wrath had been directed at Steve a couple of times for things he had done. Steve was bound and determined that he was going to stay on Lucy's good side. I knew that the story of Lucy's temper to not be true but I played along because the story helped keep Steve somewhat in line.
Oliver and Lucy paid us a visit one weekend and Steve was paranoid the entire time Oliver and his family were here. They arrived late one Friday night and one of Oliver's children needed to use the bathroom and Steve came running down the driveway, threw open the door and said, "I have to clean the bathroom!" I did not know what was going on because I had never seen Steve clean anything much less the bathroom. I watched in amusement as Steve cleaned his bathroom as well as anyone could in two minutes.
Steve spent the entire weekend avoiding Lucy and Oliver (also to my amusement) and I am reminded of the song by the Kinks, "Destroyer." There is a line in the song that says "Paranoia, the destroyer." I could not even begin to make a list of all of the things he was paranoid about.
Hilarious!
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