Day 9: Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Her name was Tara Smith... we met at a taekwondo tournament. You see I've been doing martial arts since I was five. I started competing when I was 7. I was most often the only girl my age...so I would beat up the boys (for real, I was a pretty BA kid) But theeeeeen this really cool girl named Tara started competing! I finally had a friend to compete against. We hit it off right away. She was from Oklahoma and I often looked forward to tournaments just because I knew she was sure to be there. We would spend hours and hours after our match playing games and hanging out. We were pen pals between tournaments and both enjoyed our friendly rivalry. It became kind of a running joke between us, Tara ALWAYS won forms and I ALWAYS won sparring: except for once a year, we'd have a fluke and end up switching events. Things worked out funny that way. Tara and I competed against each other on into jr. high and even into our freshmen years of high school. Then our taekwondo federation split. My school went one way and hers another. We kept emailing for awhile but then I think she moved and we lost touch. Sometimes if it's a slow facebook day, I friend search for Tara and hope maybe I'll see a familiar face I've even contacted a few of the more than 1000 Tara Smiths on facebook (she has such a common name) asking them if they had even competed with USTF martial arts and so far no luck. Hopefully someday, I'll find out what happened to Tara and maybe reconnect. (I wish I could upload a picture but all the ones of us together are saved to floppy disk and my Mac doesn't read the floppy lol)
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