Still Don't Trust the Quiet Ones

I don't know why I've been thinking about this lately but I have. 20 years ago when I was in college and before Caller ID was available to the public, there was a short concentrated time period when I got some pretty bad crank calls. I had an answering machine at the time and I was working a couple of jobs and in school full time so I was hardly home. But I would come home to several messages on my machine every day and they were from a girl with an asian accent saying "F**k you, Nolita". In truth, she sounded like a younger version of my mom. I would walk on campus looking at each female asian face thinking it was her calling me. I worked on campus and there were a lot of foreign exchange students but I didn't recall any run-ins with any of them.

I contacted the police who had me meet with a police detective who put a trap on my phone line. He instructed me to keep track of the date/time of each call from her and then after a certain amount of time we'd match up my findings with the phone company log. I gave the detective my machine tape and the log and later met up with him to discuss his findings. He asked if I knew any Vietnamese girls. I didn't, but one of my closest friends at work was a Vietnamese boy. He then told me it was my friend's girlfriend calling me leaving me the messages and that she had the mental capacity of a 6th grader. I was totally freaked out that it was so close to home.

I took the tape and met with my friend who had graduated college and moved on to another city by this time. I gave the tape to him and told him that he was dealing with a very unstable girl.  I asked if I had met her ever and he said that I had met her in the parking lot of my brother's apartments. He also told me that I had a class with her! A class that met 4 DAYS A WEEK! She just happened to be in Physics with me and of course when I went to class after that I was very apprehensive. Our awesome teacher used to do a segment he called "Viewer Mail" where we students could drop off questions about the homework and he'd go over them in class. He rolled out the mailbox and grabbed the first envelope and read "Please give to Nolita Stewart".

I don't recall learning a lot that day because I kept thinking about that note. After class I read the note in her broken English; she was apologizing "for anything she'd done wrong" like she accidentally parked in my spot and not purposefully called me hundreds of times terrorizing me. She asked me to meet her in the student union to talk and of course I said "No way" to that. I never did meet with her and I also did not press charges against her because the detective said her brother beat her pretty bad for what she'd done. My friend went on marry her at his dying dad's wish, then to divorce her after his dad's death and maybe went on to marry her again.....

I am so thankful that I was born in the U.S. and that my marriage was not arranged and that I had the freedom to grow into the person that I am...