Ashley
Hoffman
Professor
Severino
Travel
Writing
1
October 2015
Helen
I just sat down and started getting
my notebook and a pencil out when I got a text; my friend that I normally sit
with during my engineering math lecture decided last minute that he wasn’t
coming. At least he felt the need to let
me know that I would be on my own that day.
A couple minutes later, I saw my friend Helen walk by. Every lecture I see her wandering around
looking for a seat near the front. Under
normal circumstances all the seats around me are full; but because my friend
wasn’t going to make it, I decided to flag down Helen and have her sit next to
me in the second row. Helen is an
international student from China. Her
real name is actually Zihan but she chose Helen to be her American name. The
way she signs all of her papers is “Zihan (Helen) Wang”, which I think is one
of the greatest things. I don’t know
why, but the fact that she puts “Helen” in parentheses just gives me a little
giggle.
She was overjoyed to see me waving
at her to sit next to me. The moment she sat down she asked me how my day was
going in a way that you could tell that she actually cared.
“It’s going great Helen! How is your
day?”
“Oh, it is very great!”
After this little exchange she started
asking me if I “saw the tables” on my way to lecture. This left me quite
confused because I had no clue what she was referring to whatsoever.
“What tables Helen?”
She started describing their
location then said something about plants.
Little by little I started piecing her description together until, after
an embarrassingly long amount of time, I finally put it together. There was a table out on the walkway with
people selling plants. A look of relief
overcame her when I finally figured it out; you could tell that she was running
out of descriptions. The moment I
figured it out I told her how I definitely was going to stop by later; I had
been meaning to buy a cactus for a of couple weeks but I just hadn’t gotten
around to doing it.
“That is a good idea,” she
said. “Plant is a good friend. He is not noisy all the time.”
“I guess your right, Helen!” I said
as I giggled, “I never thought of it that way before!”
Just as Helen was starting to say
something, my math professor began the lecture.
As soon as the lecture was over, I went to the walkway and searched for
the plant tables. Lo and behold, the
people were still there selling plants.
I bought their tiniest cactus for two dollars, took it back to my room,
and set it on the windowsill.
Helen was right. That cactus is very quiet and, in terms of
how she explained it, is a great friend.
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