I just wanted to say hi. So, hi!

How are you doing? Is it weird to say that I’ve been thinking about you? Last week, I got another one of those emails that were meant to for you. By the way, your lab assignment for Fundamentals of Electronics looked great (not that I would know what it supposed to look like). This inbox mix up thing happens every once and a while. Remember when I got that email about your hiking trip with your fraternity? I hope that turned out okay. But every time I get one of those emails, I think about this name.

I have grown up my entire life, sharing parts of myself. There was also been another Jennifer in the room, another Tang is in the class. So I have learned to be flexible. Sometimes I’m Jen, sometimes I’m Jennifer, and there was this one person who insisted on calling me Tangster for a while there too. But I’ve always had it as a whole: Jennifer Tang. I’m sure you’ve googled our name before. So theoretically we’ve always known of each other existence on some level. I don’t know about you, but I never thought we would be this close to each other. Think about it. Out of all the different schools, out of all the different states. After all the times we thought about going somewhere else. Maybe somewhere closer to home, maybe somewhere with nicer weather, we both ended up here.

I grew up first loving our name when it rolled off the tongues of substitute teachers after they struggled down the list. I loved our name when it hid the stories I did not want to tell about wars, and displacement, and migration. Then I hated our name when I realized I had no where else to go back to. That the facade is my story. Now and days, I don’t think about it anymore. I just hope when I write it down, someone will think of me.

If our names are our identities, what happens when we share one? Maybe our lives have interwoven more than we know it. But we don’t have to figure it out now.

Because right now, I just wanted to say hi.