1973
Neighbors 2

Sue and Michele graduated and moved out from next door.  I would miss them, they were a lot of fun to hang out with.  With them gone, a girl named Karen moved in. She was in graduate school working on a PHD degree in zoology which she explained to me had to do with the classification of animals.  Over the next few weeks, I would occasionally see her and talk with her for a while.  She was quite attractive, a few years older than me which I liked, she seem more mature than younger girls I knew. She seemed to be well grounded, thoughtful, somewhat reserved, polite, and kind.  I remember I came home one day, parked my Camaro in the yard, got out and saw her sitting in her open doorway. Being a duplex, our door and her door were only a couple of feet apart, I walked towards the door and when I got closer, I saw that she was eating something out of a bowl with chopsticks.  I found this fascinating, I had only seen someone eat with chopsticks on TV shows or in movies.  I had never been to a Chinese restaurant or eaten Chinese food before. So, Karen eating with chopsticks fascinated me. I ask her why she is eating with chopsticks, and she tells me that she thought she ate too fast so she started eating with chopsticks thinking it would make her eat slower, but she said after a few days she found she could eat just as fast with chopsticks as with a fork but now she liked using them.  It would be a few more years before I would try to use chopsticks.

Karen only lived there a few months.  I was disappointed that she moved away for I had wanted to get to know her better. It was Karen telling me about zoology made me think of taking zoology at the University a couple of years later, something that changed my life.