narcoleptics need not apply

Yesterday, while looking at the bulletin board posted in my favorite pastry shop, I saw the following ad for a roommate:

WANTED: Roommate, conscious, responsible, to share 4-bedroom home in Encinitas. No pets.

A certain amount of this makes sense, of course; I'm sure I, too, would want a responsible roommate if I were going to share my expensive home in an ocean-side community.

But I've been flummoxed by the specificity of the request for a roommate who was "conscious." Did this homeowner have a problem at some point with unconscious roommates? Did applicants who were not conscious ever try to wiggle their way into this person's living situation? Was the problem serious enough that the point needed to be specifically made in advance, so that when would-be roommates applied, they darned well better plan on being conscious for the interview?

I would assume that most roommate applicants would show up for housing interviews in a conscious state, but perhaps this is naive of me. This is Encinitas, after all. I see lots of semi-conscious types wandering around.

Which then led me to wonder if I was simply misunderstanding altogether. This pastry shop is right next door to Swami's self-realization clinic. Perhaps the advertiser really did want someone with "consciousness"--meaning, of course, a very specific kind of consciousness. The kind of consciousness that vacuously asserts that it is one with the world and, by implication, that you are not.

I'm not at all sure I'd like to live with someone who was one with the world. I'll bet they don't tidy up after themselves very well.