Lessons from a leasee

My freshman year I thought I really knew what independence was. \n"Is there a curfew?" someone asked during our first floor meeting. I wasn't the one who asked, but I thought it was a reasonable enough question. "Man, I ain't your mama!" was our Resident Assistant's answer. He seemed perfectly content to stay out of our business as long as we stayed out of his, an arrangement to which no one objected. Well, almost no one. After that first semester, our RA was replaced with someone else who was about as personable as a particle board. But, hey, we were free, man -- no parents, no curfew and it only took about three phone calls to score a case of Natural Light with a 275 percent markup.\nThen, after freshman year, I moved out of the dorm and into a house. Pretty soon, I found out I didn't know squat about independence. I wasn't alone, of course. I was sharing the ride (and the rent) with four of my best buddies. For the first time in my life, I actually had to buy a bed and pick out furniture. Granted, they weren't the toughest choices in the world.\n(At the used furniture store)\nMe: Hi, I'm looking for a dining room set.\nSalesman: How about this piece of plywood on top of four cinderblocks? \nMe: Sold!\nCompared to a house, moving into a dorm is like checking into the Four Seasons. You step up to the desk in the main lobby, they hand you a key and you find your room where your bed, desk and chair are provided. No need to worry about calling to set up utilities, sir, there's plenty of hot water, and the toilet paper supply is replenished daily. If you're hungry, the cafeteria is just a stone's throw away where you can get a burrito or baked potato until 11 p.m. Oh, no, sir, you won't be needing any cash. Your meal points will buy you enough Dunkin' Donuts to make a trail from here to the International Dateline. And yes, the hall light will always be left on for you.\nWhat I so foolishly mistook for independence was actually the lap of luxury. When you have to buy ice cube trays and bath mats, you know you're on your own. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I miss the dorms. The meal points were nice, but it's nicer not to have to wear sandals in the shower.\nPerhaps I'm speaking too soon. I don't own my house, so if stuff breaks, I can call the landlord, an option I've availed myself of twice already because of a shot glass caught in the garbage disposal. But there's no cafeteria here, and what's more, I can't seem to bake a potato. I could leave a potato in the blazing hot oven for three days, and it still wouldn't be fork tender, like some kind of perfectly executed practical joke. Before I learned to cook, I was on a steady diet of ramen noodles and Spaghetti-Os.\nRenting a house has taught me a lot but not everything. I know a little bit of silicone tape on the pipe will prevent the showerhead from dripping, but I can't figure out for the life of me why there's never a clean fork when I need one. I've been meaning to call my landlord about that. \nWhen I'm 80 years old, I think I'll finally be ready to own a home, but by then I'll have to be relocated to a place where there's a cafeteria with a steady supply of baked potatoes and the hall light is always left on for me.