Seoul to Atlanta
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The kitten’s improbable appearance on that chilly predawn morning reminded me once more that life has no qualms about tossing twists and turns my way whenever it pleases. As I watched the tiny kitten tackle the milk with clumsy determination, my mind wandered to another totally unexpected event that life had thrown at me. It occurred a few years earlier when Heidi, out of the blue, put her lunch tray down on my usually empty table in the school cafeteria and sat down across from me.
She was a popular kid—super smart, graceful, and quietly charismatic—whose company was sought by both classmates and teachers alike. Yet there wasn’t an arrogant little bone in her body. Heidi’s appeal was further accentuated by her long, wavy locks of silky light brown hair that glittered like gold under the bright afternoon sun, and her sweetness reached its enchanting peak when she smiled.
Her family lived in a mansion on Buckhead’s Northside Drive, the most upscale neighborhood in Atlanta. Not surprisingly, she was always dressed in stylish, high-end clothes; the Ralph Lauren polo shirts she frequently wore were particularly noteworthy, as they were considered a status symbol in Atlanta then. Every morning, Heidi arrived at school in a gleaming Cadillac luxury sedan.
My circumstances were starkly different. A recent immigrant from Korea, I was an awkward and friendless kid living on the wrong side of the tracks. My hair was remarkably plain, without any distinctive features, and too dull to shimmer under the sun. The clothes I wore were cheap stuff my mom had diligently picked out from K-Mart’s discount racks. Every morning, I had to rise before dawn broke and sit through an hour-long bus ride just to make my way to the school located in Heidi’s refined part of the city.
Our paths intersected only by virtue of my situation. The school we both attended was the sole upper primary school in Atlanta that generously provided after-school English as a Second Language tutoring back then. This was a decade before the 1996 Summer Olympics culturally shook up this old Southern metropolis.
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So why did Heidi choose to sit across from me? I’m not certain, as I’d never thought to ask her. But I know it wasn’t because she had a thing for a socially awkward Korean boy who could barely piece an English sentence together. Perhaps it was her innate kindness that made her feel sorry for me, always seen eating alone at a corner table during lunch. That’s my hypothesis, especially since she decided to join me at my solitary table the very next day after she stepped in to softly, yet firmly, chew out the two big ole boys who were picking on me.
But does the reason why she did it truly matter? Eating in solitude was an unpleasant, even embarrassing ordeal, and I had longed for company. Heidi, it seemed, was the angel who answered my silent prayers. She even beckoned her friends waiting in line at the cash register to join us, effectively surrounding me with a circle of camaraderie. Her message was loud and clear: I was no longer alone.
My new allies all tried their best to talk to me, some speaking extra slowly for my benefit, but I really couldn’t reciprocate, not able to understand the words that were coming out of their mouths. But the sound of their voices went into my ears like a soothing melody. From then on, Heidi and her friends often sat with me and continued to put a little more music into my world during lunch.
Heidi also introduced me to her equally charismatic brother, a cool 12-year-old with bright hazel eyes and a ready smile. His hair, always slightly overgrown and wildly tousled with a sun-kissed glow, gave the impression that he had just returned from a day at the breezy beach, like one of them California surfer dudes on TV. True enough, hanging out with him was as exhilarating as catching big waves on a windswept day at Mavericks Beach in Half Moon Bay.
Heidi’s brother opened my ears to the sublime sounds of the Beatles, Blondie, and Electric Light Orchestra that reverberated in my head for days afterward. He also introduced me to American football, which quickly supplanted baseball and soccer as my number one sport, with Walter Payton replacing Nolan Ryan and Pele as my favorite athlete. One of my fondest memories with him was spending hours in his spacious room drawing our favorite NFL helmet logos, uniforms, and players, all while listening to 70s and 80s music and eating his mom’s delicious homemade cookies.
My time with them was, sadly, brief—a mere three months—due to my family relocating from Atlanta to Doraville, a suburb town about 15 miles away from the city. Nevertheless, were it not for the kindness of those little friends and the two teachers who patiently and lovingly tutored me in English, I’m certain that my acclimation to life in America would have been much longer and more difficult. This was especially true since the isolation and bullying I suffered at the new school was even more severe, and there wasn’t anyone like Heidi to bail me out there.