Growing Pain- Part I

I met Michelle T. when I was twenty three in the Hong Kong University coffee shop. I was still new to Hong Kong, and as an undergrad transfer student from New York, I felt out of sort amidst the younger Chinese university student colleagues. I saw myself as old and unfit to be there. Imagine that? I'd die to be twenty three again now, but that's how I felt then. I was already married yet I was still a kid, and comparing myself to the other naive kids who may have still been virgins I had mixed feelings of superiority and shame.

It was may be the first or the second day of school, I don't recall exactly. Exhausted from the class hopping in the new environment, I made my way to the coffee shop on the main square on campus. The venue was crowded with hungry people hunting for food and seats. I maneuvered my way to the pay station with a tray of toastie and a Diet Coke and snatched a table quickly shamelessly demonstrating my competitiveness (and perhaps rudeness) a la Korean style. Once seated, I opened the can of Diet Coke- the drink of choice by me in those days, always dieting- and lit a Marlboro Light, ready to start people watching. This was the moment I spotted Michelle T. And she spotted me too! It was a classic moment of friendship at first sight. I recognized the uncanny coolness in her looks and demeanor right away. She stood out like a rose in a bush of weeds, like a flamboyant soul among, let's say, a bunch of bankers. And as for me, well, it was clear that she also noticed me because she actually came up to my table and said she had noticed me earlier on campus would it be OK if she sat next to me.