don't you know how garlic butter smells like?

somehow, i've manage to survive the UP dorm system my entire college life and half of my law school life. while i've learned to live with communal bathrooms, the lack of running hot water, incessant chattering day and night, and beady eyes checking out how my current boyfriend looks like, i cannot have a difficult time accepting the fact that cheap - and relatively acceptable accommodations - come with hormonally challenged old ladies who do nothing but exchange gossip and throw away garlic butter that does not belong to them.

you might find me cheap, pathetic even, to be ranting about someone throwing away my garlic butter. but when you used your last money to buy it one day from pan de manila, and was terribly looking forward to eating it with hot steaming pan de sal after a particularly long day, you can't helped but be ticked off upon finding that someone has thrown away your dinner, or what would have been a big part of your dinner.

still believing in the good nature of people in the dorm, i actually spent almost five minutes looking for it in the overcrowded refrigerator. among other things, i found a bottle of gin, a paper cup of what was probably soda ten weeks ago from wendy's, and eggs that seem to have grown into chicks already in the ref but not my garlic butter. a middle-aged lady approached me, asking what i was looking for, and i said, well, i couldn't find my garlic butter.

apparently, someone cleaned out the ref over the weekend (clearly missing the mutated soda, hrmph!) and upon smelling the contents, probably thought that since my butter smelled unlike any butter she has seen inhaled before, threw my butter along with other not-so-right-smelling things that were infesting our wing's refrigerator.

i couldn't help it. i whined. "maybe she didn't know garlic butter was supposed to smell that way. she shouldn't have messed with it in the first place."

two days later, i was actually over it, payday having arrived and the possibility of buying another tub of garlic butter has presented itself once more. however, this morning, my roommate (wilma, you ALL know her, right?) told me that some people were chatting about my garlic butter last night. apparently, they were saying that if it were garlic butter i should have labeled it (clearly they don't know how to read the label on the container, duh.) and written "do not touch" across the cover (last time i checked my ms. manners, no one was supposed to touch what clearly did not belong to you.)

oh well. i've got another semester to go in that place. i don't know where they'll be next year, or five years after that but i know where i'll be:

i'll be where garlic butter tubs don't disappear from refrigerators.