Blondie

Blondie is one of the biggest ‘what ever became of her’ mysteries of my life. I was a first-year teaching assistant in grad school …experiencing insecurities I hadn’t felt in a long time. She came into the computer lab looking for tutoring help with statistics. She was my first. I was apprehensive about the material but it all came rushing back …only I was trying to explain it at the speed of thought. She looked at me …smiled and told me to take a deep breath …I’m going way to fast. I took this as helpful advice and took that breath, which made us both laugh. I dialed it back and broke it down into steps that she could follow. Days later I got a visit from a professor who thanked me …told me that Blondie had aced a big test …and that she’d credited me for it. Turned out to be one of the first steps in helping me get over my insecurities. Next time I saw her …she and her friend were racing excitedly through the stacks of research articles in the library. She was clearly someone who was into what she was doing …or perhaps, who she was doing it with. I smiled but didn’t want to get in the way of progress. I saw her again the following term ...only this time it was at a conference we were hosting on campus.  She was attending  a small panel discussion lead by a well-known expert from Columbia. She was dressed in a beautiful pearly white top, navy blue skirt and Evan Picone pumps. Stunning (I’d only ever seen her dressed in blue jeans and a tee). She was sitting by herself. My first impression was ...she’s seriously considering graduate school. Afterwards, I left to attend a small dinner party that we were holding for the panel leader. It wasn’t until later it occurred to me that, when I was where she is now, how helpful it would have been for someone to have noticed me at an event like this and invited me to a dinner with a big shot. If nothing else it would have given her a boost ...kind of like the one she’d given me a year earlier.