I lived in the dorms for a semester in college. My roommate and I acquired a mottled rust and orange colored shag carpet remnant to cover the tile. The cinder block walls had been painted aquamarine. Somebody made light of the color by taping a paper puffer fish to the door – one of those cheap decorations they might hang at a grocery store to herald a Hawaiian days promotion. The fish was stolen within a week.

The room was probably the most depressingly hideous space on the planet, which didn’t bother my roommate as much as my inability to properly decorate my side.

“There’s no theme over there. Nothing matches,” she said.

This was true, but in my defense, throughout most of the rest of my life there had been a distinct lack of burnt umber and turquoise hues with which to work. I was out of my element.

And there was the fact that I hadn’t realized one was supposed to decorate a dorm room.

My boyfriend snapped to with one of his brilliant comebacks.

“Of course everything matches over here,” he said. “It has to. There’s at least one item of every color. Anything that comes in here is bound to match something else.”