» Stalked

I have a predilection for doing things in completely ass-backwards ways...
...which lead to a highly involved and complicated method of stalking my roommate in college.

I got him as a roommate by random pairing during my sophomore year and didn’t know a thing about him except his name. No one else in my dorm did either, not even what year he was, and I was getting pumped for information on the Mystery Man. Time went on and he remained enigmatic, but as others started to lose interest, I became increasingly intrigued.

In our dorm, a communal area connected to my room, which connected to his, so we effectively had separate but adjoined rooms, and so contact was absolutely minimal and was only in passing. I could have taken 10 paces and looked through his things, or followed him around, or probably even have asked him, but that would have violated the solemn barrier he had maintained. These methods seemed crass and intrusive, like Sherlock Holmes waterboarding a suspect. No, this would require finesse and ingenuity.

My goal was to determine his area of study by using only the information he made available to me. I was going to play by his rules, on his terms, and I was going to break him. Indeed, he was wily, but he had underestimated me as an opponent and had made one crucial mistake. Instead of entering and exiting his room via the secrecy of his window, he carelessly used the door, thereby walking past me in plain sight whenever he entered or exited his room.

For several weeks, I rigorously documented these crucial moments. Patterns developed, and soon I knew when all of his classes were. That narrowed things down somewhat, but any amateur could have done the same and I was still far from what I set out for.

The size of our campus made my grand achievement possible. I had accumulated a large and precise sample size of comings and going, which enabled me to determine not just when he was on the move, but how far he was traveling as well—an average return time of 7 after the hour meant drama, English, chemistry, or physics, while 10 after put him at math, economics, or the closer parts of the foreign language buildings. I mapped out all potential classes on the time schedule by biking distance, and then compiled my data by logical scheduling choices to put together a coherent picture (i.e. no Physics 101 and Physics 301 together).

This procedure ended up spanning two quarters since I needed help from sequential classes to narrow it down all the way, but I eventually managed to peg him as a philosophy guy with more than a passing interest in biology, probably looking at bioethics down the line.

I didn’t confront him directly about this, but as he packed to leave at the end of the year, presumably smug about the impenetrable enigma he had woven, I printed off a good 40 pages of notes and charts and stuck them into one of his bags.

I never saw him again.

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(Thu 31st Jan 2008, 23:21, More)