Meeting Heather

At exactly this time four years ago I was getting ready to go to a Ben Folds concert. He was in Shreveport and my friend Bounds, who was at Tech at the time, and our friend/his roommate Jacob were coming to town on that Friday night to see him perform. I had been invited. I was not at Tech yet. I took my freshman year classes here in Shreveport-Bossier at a local community college. I knew little about Ben Folds. In fact, the only song I knew of his was that cover he did of Dr Dre’s. Yea. That song. But a concert was a good enough reason to go and hang out with Bounds and Jacob, so I went.

Afterwards, they invited me to go to a 24-hr diner that was here in town called Murrell’s (RIP). Some more people from Tech were going too and I decided that since I knew I was going there the following year, I'd better go and maybe meet some people. On the short drive over to Murrell’s, I decided I wasn't going to sit by either Bounds or Jacob. I knew them. I needed to get to know other people. We had a large group so our table was a bunch of small tables put together and I ended up sitting by the wall at the very end. Well, this young lady sat across from me. We started chatting. I guess she told me her name is Heather and she was an English major. Then I asked her what courses she was taking and one of them was History of Modern Eastern Europe. What a coincidence! Just days before I had been studying the cultural differences between Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs and had someone to talk about my findings! Also, we discussed what the origins and the correct pronunciation of the last name of Simić (as in noted Serbian-American poet Charles Simić). Then she told me she was kind of obsessed with Asia, especially Korea. I, being quite the Sinophile at the time, loved this. She told me she was going to Korea later in the year and she was also taking an independent study with the provost of Tech who was a Chinese specialist. I'm pretty sure The Philadelphia Story or Cary Grant or Katharine Hepburn were brought up as well. They had to have been!

Well, we were talking nonstop. After a while, I realized the guy next to her was none too pleased with me. I gathered from a few hints that they were probably on a date (or so he thought), but Heather wouldn't stop talking to me and she was so interesting I didn't want her to stop, so we continued our conversation. (Heather told me months later that she too knew no one there and reluctantly even went the Shreveport with the guy.) We exchanged numbers and I told her that I’d be in Ruston in two weeks celebrating a friend’s birthday and we should hang out then, too. We did. We stayed in contact over the next few months via Facebook and the occasional text. She went to Korea in August for a month, before school started back up again. I started Tech in September as a sophomore. She entered her senior year there. Everything from then on has brought us to where we are today.

Heather and me at The Robinson Film Center
10/28/11