Taking a peek at Facebook my old college friend Taesen posted a few pictures recently and seeing her reminded me of Spanish class at Ohio State University. This was the class right before Spanish 401. Spanish 401 was a course I’ll never forget as it was an extremely difficult grammar class and designed to weed out those students who were not serious about learning the language. But the class before 401 – whose number I forget – was not difficult and in it where two pretty girls, Taesen and Heather and naturally I got to know them both.
Taesen became my workout partner and is mentioned in this 1996 post. We have kept in touch these past 20 years and she even took a trip out here to San Francisco with her husband. We met up for a coffee (mine was Irish) at the famous Buena Vista Cafe and she let me know her husband was not too pleased about the meeting – but we had a good time catching up anyway. She is doing well and I’m very happy things worked out for her. But this post is not about Taesen – Sorry Tae-Tae.
Seeing Taesen’s Facebook post make me also think about Heather – a person I decided not to keep in touch with shortly after Spanish class ended. Heather was attractive and I’ll always remember how she wore her lipstick: it was a deep red color outlined with dark brown or black. I had never payed any attention to how girls wore lipstick before but this really stood out and I thought it was quite sexy.
If I remember correctly we met up for a few study sessions and it was then I quickly learned that she was a train wreck. In class one really doesn’t have time to get to know other students very well but meeting up afterwords gives the chance to talk and we did talk. I only remember a very few things from speaking with her: her Dad had his hand cut off in a machinery accident at the factory; she would break down and cry on telephone calls; and someone at Long’s Bookstore – where she worked – told her something I had said was “bullshit.” I don’t remember what I said but I do remember being surprised and offended that she took the opinion of the Long’s bookstore employee over mine. It wasn’t long before I realized that Heather was not only a train wreck but also a liar. I started to catch her in her lies and she would get angry and not speak with me anymore.
And that’s it; that is all I remember about Heather. But seeing Taesen’s post on Facebook made me wonder what ever became of Heather. Unless she was able to turn her life around and quash those demons inside which made her act like a cliche crazy woman then I would guess she is somewhere in rural Ohio, divorced with a kid or two and now has a rocky relationship with a guy who has a neck tattoo. I really hope I’m wrong, things got better and she is living a wonderful life but I highly doubt it.
Heather taught me that attractive women can turn out to be incredibly crazy; I had not known that yet, but now I do.
There are many others I only knew briefly at Ohio State and I wonder what they are doing now. Given that our acquaintance was brief and there are so many I really do not have the motivation to remember their full names and look them up on Facebook. But like the others Heather was just a passing memory just like the thousands of other memories that flicker in my head and fade back away. The only difference is that Heather now has her own post in my life story and so as the memories fade as I grow older this memory is now preserved in a database.
