Recently my good friend Wade came to live with me. I hadn't planned on having any roommates, mostly because I'm still in Rebecca-recovery, WHICH DOES NOT NECESSARILY CARRY NEGATIVE IMPLICATIONS ABOUT REBECCA. But Wade is in transition and trying to find a place to live closer to work and school so he doesn't have to commute from the south end of the valley anymore.

I, temporarily,offered him the bedroom in my basement. Ten seconds later he was marking his height on a wall in the kitchen and writing "Wade, 2015" next to it.

I have to say that so far he is proving to rival the greatest roommates of all time. It's like having Rebecca live with me again but without wondering every day if I'm going to come home to find a giraffe taking a nap in the kitchen or rice pouring all over the floor or an explosion of bread because someone got confused and thought the recipe called for one cup of yeast.

Oh my gosh. You guys. I think I Love Lucy might have been based on Rebecca's life.


Wade is good people. And I love having him live in my house. Since he's in the basement and I'm upstairs, I've been trying to turn this into a Downton Abbey thing. I've even installed a morning bell that I ring whenever I wake up.

So far he hasn't really gone for this, nor has he succumbed to my demands that he start speaking in a British accent.

Stubborn. This is so Barrow of him.

Actually I want him to be a combination of Anna, Mrs. Hughes, and Carson. I'm Edith, obviously. Hashtag Eli's dating life.

Wade is 22 years old which means he was born in--wait for it--1993.

You guys. Let me give you some perspective here. This was the year that Jurassic Park came out. Let that sink in for a minute.

Someone who was born when Jurassic Park came out is living in my house.

When I hang out with Wade I usually sort of forget that we weren't born in the same year. He's mature for his age and I'm immature for my age so we settle in right at about 25 together. Then all of the sudden something will come up that reminds me that we did not grow up on the same planet and as it turns out an eight-year age gap is actually pretty dramatic at this phase of life.

Eli: OMG. Don't you wish they still did TGIF on Friday nights?

Wade: What's TGIF?

Eli: Seriously? Full House? Step-by-Step? Boy Meets World? Sabrina THE TEENAGE WITCH?! HANGIN' WITH MR. COOPER!?!??!

Wade: Oh, I think I've heard of some of those shows.

Eli: How can you not know about these things!? TGIF was like a father to me! Everyone between the ages of 6 and 16 purposefully didn't make plans on Friday night just so we wouldn't miss it!

Wade: Why didn't you just watch it on Hulu later?

Eli: Wade! That wasn't even close to existing at that time!

Wade: Hulu wasn't around yet?

Eli: The Internet wasn't around yet. THE ENTIRE INTERNET. We didn't even know that word back then.

Wade: So you couldn't even watch netflix?

Eli:Back in my day, if you wanted to be entertained by a program, you made sure you were home when it aired. And you did not get up and leave during commercial breaks because someone might consider that a tv forfeiture and change the channel and it is really hard to win an appeal on that if you left the room.

Wade: And there was no way to just program your tv to record it?

Eli: Well, we could record it onto VHS. But such things were only reserved for the most important programming. VHS tapes were limited in supply, yet high in demand and you had to be pretty darn sure that something was going to be better that whatever you were about to record over.

Wade: VHS? Is that the one you had to blow into to get it to work?

Eli: Oh my gosh! Do today's children not even know what a regular Nintendo is anymore?!

If some of the comments to this post don't start with "back in my day," the Stranger community has failed.

~It Just Gets Stranger