College landlords are the worst, everyone knows. But for some cosmic reason, my senior year the clouds parted and we got handed God's gift to renters; Brian *SomethingOtherThanGlass. The house was his pet project and rent was cheap. Our first viewing consisted of us dancing around the fact that half our potential roommates were currently out of the country and the other half had terrible credit. But Brian and his supercool wife Teresa *SomethingOtherThanGlass were too busy explaining how we were adults and should be able to smoke in the house if we so choose.

  • Us: "Could we hang out in the attic?!"
  • SuperLandLords: "Well, it"s probably not a GREAT idea to inhale too much fiberglass insulation, but…"
  • Us: "Don't worry, we're seniors. We're kind of over the partying stage."
  • SuperLandLords: "You don't have to lie. Hey, want this ShopVac?"

The interview ended when Teresa (who used to work for Zymogenetics, a place I am convinced is a front for manufacturing jetpacks and rayguns, thus elevating her to Godess status) said, "Brian, lets leave these girls be. I'm hunnnngry and wanna go to Wendys!”. Don’t ever let her go, Brian. Ever. The lease and paperwork he left us listed his email address as zabomb@*somethingotherthanaol.com. Zabomb? What could it mean? Zabomb. Finally, later - "I wonder…is...because he's…Za=Tha…ZABOMB!!!" Fucking. Genius.

We only saw him a few times throughout the year; the occasional stop by repair. Never a word of complaint that we'd turned his garage in to a beer pong room and were 7 games deep at 2 in the afternoon and a little TOO excited to see him. Once he had to come unclog our shower drain. "Girls, I want you to come look at this," forcing us to look our giant hairball demon straight in the eye. Not to be an asshole, but because how else were we ever to learn?

Lastly, ZaBomb is a tall, bald Caucasian with a goatee. His hair color could best be described as 'there', or 'hair color'. Basically, he looks like every fifth man I walk by everyday. While my reasons to appreciate him are plenty, this doesn't really explain why I still say "ZaBomb?" in my head. Everyday, every fifth man. I mean, that was 3 years ago! Soon i'll be approaching strangers and apologizing for leaving a box spring in the driveway and for all the dart holes in the wall.