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| NAME: Heidi NICKNAME: "Girlfriend" HOOKED-UP: 1999-2000 NOTEWORTHY: As you can see, she is beautiful; and it seemed she was always an object of desire for a half-dozen guys at any one time. But upon our first meeting, I was not at all interested. Hard to believe as that may be. After being out of any kind of romantic relationship for only four months, which was the first extended period of single/alone time I had enjoyed in over two years, I was not looking for a girlfriend when Heidi arrived in August 1998 to join WUT. Additionally, she came with "baggage," meaning: multiple guys were already vying for her attention to the point of having followed her in from other/previous areas of her life. One guy even claimed they were an item; so to me, it seemed just as well. Add this with her naturally aggressive--often intrusive--style, then factor in her longtime smoking habit, and it's not hard to understand why I initially gave her the cold shoulder. A period of over six months went by where we got to know each other a little better, and I warmed up to her somewhat. The time came when she chose to quit smoking--"cold turkey"--which is the point where we started to socialize regularly, since I was one of the few non-smoking friends she had to support her kicking the habit. This, in turn, opened the door to a relationship (at least in my mind); and she became my first RHPS girlfriend in about four years. At that time, we were both members of the Topanga Cast in Woodland Hills; and within two months, she had also joined tech crew for Midnight Insanity, where I'd already been a performing member for nearly five years. Being in two casts together might make it sound like we got too much of each other early on; but it really wasn't that way. During the week, we hardly saw one another (me being in The Valley, her living in El Segundo); but we did exchange E-mails, phone calls and chat on A.I.M. The weekends was when we were rarely apart; but there were also the shows, cast meetings, etc. So there wasn't very much peace & quiet or alone time to be had. Surprisingly, we worked through the adversity and our relationship remained strong--which I honestly didn't expect for a number of reasons. In fact, there were many things about Heidi that proved to be pleasant as well as quite positive. She was a very good girlfriend. The biggest surprise was in how she proved to be my longest relationship up through that point. We lasted 17 months; our break-up occurring when things started on a downslide, but before they could turn negative--which is part of what helped our friendship to remain as positive as it has. In fact, I was quite pleased for her to hear that by the end of 2002, she had started a new family of her very own. I continue to offer her my best wishes. __________________________ |