how life happens for me...

There is a place near my school that at least every student has been to at one time or another. It is a restaurant called Thai Spoon. The food is consistent and good, the place is quiet and cozy, so it's no surprise that I end up there at least once a week, if not more. Also, the only person that I have truly made friends with meets me there once a week. I know it is hard to believe that with my high level of attractive personality I have only managed to successfully make and keep a friend. I think alot of it has to do with the fact that I feel so much older and wiser than most of my classmates, but I also have always been a bit of a loner (which I think I got from my mom). I feel quite fond of my friend, Katherine, and I enjoy her company quite a lot. She is also a fiction writing major and we share some other interests. There could be none so dorky as the two of us sitting through an entire year of Astronomy. Together.

Every Wednesday we meet. It is right after my English Composition class and I walk the block in great long strides. Katherine waits around for an hour after her English Composition II class. She has another class later and could probably make it home and back with an hour to spare, but we are friends and this is when we see each other. Wednesdays at Thai Spoon.

We always get the spinach rangoons. They are just like crab rangoons, but made with spinach. They are the best rangoons I have ever tasted. I would have never tried them because I don't really like crab rangoons (Which I now realize has something to do with the sickly flavor of the imitation crab). Katherine is a vegetarian and doesn't eat any kind of animal product, real or imitation. They are deep fried wontons with a little pocket of cream cheese mixed with spinach bits. They arrive at the table in a circle of five around a tiny bowl of sweet pink dipping sauce. The rangoons aren't pretty little cookie cutter types; they are misshapen, some with their folded parts still down, on some the oil and frying has lifted up the folds into little wings. They look to me like headless little birds with green flecks visible in their fat round bellies. I never tell Katherine this because I know she doesn't like to eat animals.

It is a little awkward that there are only five. Katherine and I are both very fair and judicious and it is a little odd when we've both had two and there is one lonely rangoon with it's wings in the air waiting to be plucked and eaten. Ocaisionally, we spilt it in half. One wing for each of us and then half of the stomach, a mush of cream cheese that is silky and light and hot with little green fibers of spinach.

It is probably the most delightful taste you can imagine in your mouth. Something crunchy but still soft and yielding, with a salty but sweet smudge of cream cheese. It is really good. I am always surprised by them. We usually eat them without saying a word, just enjoying the taste of them. It has been long enough that I think we both already feel nostalgic; looking behind there has been years of rangoons, looking ahead, there is graduation and the rangoons will grow into a memory.

Katherine and I are both nearly graduates. We have one more class of our major to finish, which we plan to take together. Considering that we met in an early installment of the fiction classes, Fiction II, it only seems fitting to end up together. Though I am looking forward to finishing school, I worry that I will lose touch with Katherine. We've made some plans outside of classes, but for the most part, we find it easier to hang out together while being at school.

They know us at the Thai Spoon. Even though all the people from last year are gone, the new crop of waitresses know us already. They smile when they see us and giggle at our table. Yesterday, the girl who is particularly friendly to us, spoke to us about coming to America from Thailand and how it was for her to learn English, from people like us, just coming to eat there. Her name is Ben.

While we were talking to Ben or she was talking to us, I noticed she had a little hickey on her neck. I don't know why I am always the one to notice these sorts of things. Maybe because I am a writer. Maybe because it was facing me more than it was Katherine. It was just a pinkish swirl but I knew it was a hickey and not some other thing because it had makeup worked over it, in an attempt to cover it up. The problem with concealor is that it fades after a while. Considering that it was nearly four in the afternoon, it probably just needed a touch-up.

When I see things like this, things that seem somewhat contrary to a person (Even Katherine didn't seem to believe it) I always think about making them a character. I always think about writing and how a character should have a secret. They should surprise you in this little way. You should think you know everything about them until there's just this glaring oversight that they would never tell you. A hickey. On a girl who came here all alone from Thailand.

I then went on from there to doing what most people would do and imagine what it would be like if our situations were reversed and I moved to Thailand and was learning the language by being a waitress in a hamburger joint or American style bar. How insane is that? I thought it was lovely when Katherine tried to tell her she was very brave and Ben didn't understand the word. That is so lovely and ironic and fascinating to me.

Sometimes I wonder why I am different. Why do I have to be the kind of person that is snagged by thoughts like those? Why can't I just be in the moment of something and not be recording it in my mind's eye, that hickey, that fading swirl of makeup, Katherine's use of bravery.

In the midst of all these heady thoughts a girl who had been sitting alone came over to our table. She asked us the time. In hindsight, I can tell this was just a ploy to begin speaking to us and it was kind of move that is pathetically adorable. She had overheard us telling Ben that we were fiction writing majors. She is one also. However, we are at the end of ours and she is just at the beginning in Fiction I. We chatted for a few minutes with her. Her voice was impeded by a disability, as were her limbs. I told her that we went to the Thai Spoon every Wednesday and if she liked, she could join us for lunch. She was so excited and happy. I hoped Katherine wouldn't mind that our time together would be changed. She said later that it was okay. Maybe it is because it is inevitable that it will change, and why not share ourselves with someone who needs friends? The girl, Joan, had not made any other friends at school. I told her that in three years, Katherine was my only friend. She said happily that maybe she could be my second friend. I found her very sweet.

In the end, I think she was very brave to approach us. It is not easy to go to school with a bunch of overly hip cool people and know who is approachable and who isn't. Maybe not so brave as leaving your homeland and traversing countries and water to end up in a Thai restaurant, like Ben, but maybe more so.