Using hand-wash as toothpaste — College Subplots

Welcome back to another subplot, where I’m not the main character of the story, and you get to experience it like me — as a third person who had almost no say in the outcome.

Since I don’t want to disclose the name, I used a random name generator, which gave the result as Nischal and he’s going to be the main character of this story.

Context Setup!

Let’s go back to our hostel in October 2014, this was during the first semester of my college, the swine flu event will occur in the next semester.

Nischal was an extreme procrastinator. The kind that will stress you out. He was so lazy that he only changed his bedsheets once every 6 months, even though all you had to do was go downstairs to the laundry section and exchange it for free; he used to flip it upside down once every 3 months if it gives you any consolation. 🤣

He was so lazy, that he never did any homework at all, he always invariably copied it off others. His whole team didn’t do the final year project — the kind that you are given 1 year to do, until the last week before the submission.

He was so lazy that he never even went to get cash out of the ATM. He simply used to tell the PIN to other people so that other people would bring out the cash for him.

With this context setup…

Alright, let’s get started!

Nischal had a roommate in the first year. He never got the supplies for the room — He would use his roommate’s soap, towels, and practically everything that he had, but when the time came out to pay the other person, he used to be disappointed that someone was counting pennies, but at least he dished out the cash.

The roommate was tired of his antics and decided to teach him a lesson.

This was his plan — stall him until he takes action; get no supplies for the room at all; until he caves in and purchases them; he would survive by asking for the supplies from other people until then. He had to get tired by a few days right?

*Sure, he could have gotten the supplies and shared the price 50/50, but he wanted to teach him a lesson, not be his slave.

It began, he stopped getting the supplies, and one by one, things started to run out — the first one being toothpaste. They ran out of toothpaste and started to ask around for it, instead of buying it themselves.

You might think that this went on for 2–3 days maximum. 🤭

It went on for 2 weeks! For two weeks, both Nischal and his roommate used to go toothpaste hunting every morning around the hostel. It was so embarrassing for the roommate… that he caved in first instead.

Then, while me and a few other boys were in the bathroom when this happened:

The roommate was already in the bathroom, complaining that Nischal never got the supplies for the room, and how useless he was, whereas Nischal argued back saying that it’s just some toothpaste, borrow it from others and then he would go and get it later in the day.

Roommate argued back saying that this has been going on for 2 weeks and it is really embarrassing to ask people for toothpaste every day. Nischal, then argued back that he should go and get it himself if it was that important to him.

Something just snapped inside the roommate, he said this in a declarative manner: “This lazy bum is so useless that he never got us a toothpaste, and I’ve been asking from you guys for more than 2 weeks straight; he is forcing me to do this.”

And proceeds to put a line of hand-wash soap on his toothbrush! Before we could even react, he goes ahead and puts it in his mouth to brush his teeth!

When he put the hand-wash soap on the toothbrush, we thought that it was a joke, and all of us were laughing, but when he suddenly used that to brush his teeth, we all shouted to stop him.

We stopped him and made him spit it out. One of the boys offered their spare toothbrush and paste to him, while Nischal shamelessly asked for some spare toothpaste from the same person, and that was the end of the drama for that day.

You might think that Nischal, must have got a pack of toothpaste finally as an apology or at least for the sake of closure…. but, he didn’t. 🤣

His lazy bum didn’t bother to go the store and get it, despite him literally visiting the same store for cigarettes earlier in the day and his caved-in roommate bought a pack for both of them, telling him that, if he didn’t buy some toothpaste for Nischal, he would do the hand-wash as toothpaste everyday. 🤣

Thank you so much for reading till the end. These are some of the small stories that I suddenly recalled from college and wanted to share. Obviously, the original name has been changed, but anyone from my college can figure out who it is. 🤣 If you, make sure you don’t share this article with them. 😝

— Samridh Tuladhar ( @tsamridh86 )