25th time

Saturday I woke up and it was the day I was born, only twenty-five years later.  That's not what struck me first though.  What struck me first was the thud-thud-thud-and-so-on of construction.  Brittney ran into the room like a kid who's just slammed the door in the face of the weird neighbors' angry dog that go out and chased them down the block.

"Ohmygodthere's a guy with a badmintonracket."

So it wasn't construction, it was an angry person.

Brittney thought it was the man who was angry, hitting something with the badminton racket.  The sound was too deep though.  I didn't believe it.  We phoned Whitney, who lives in 306.

"It's some girl kicking the door," she said, and I could hear the screams now.  Maybe the man had gone to investigate with the racket for protection.  Probably though he is just a sportsm'n.

I am not about to waste an opportunity like this.  I am getting suitably dressed and investigating.  By the time I get up there she's gone.  There is a pillow on the stairs, pink, with two dirty shoe prints stamped in it.  The number pad, (we don't have keys), for the door in question is heavily askew.  I am heading back down the stairs and I pass a girl heading up.  I believed she was a curious neighbor like me, and so I give her the appropriate "search me what's going on" type of shrug.  She says something, I don't remember what but it gives her away clearly as the jackhammer.

"What's the problem?" I ask her.  She's past me at this point, walking up the stairs as I walk down.

"What is your fucking problem," she says through a sob and a thick accent.

There was a bit more pounding, but shortly there after she was admitted entry into the apartment.  Whitney said that she only ever saw an old woman go in there before that morning.  The woman's screaming carried out, but now out of the hallway she was muffled by all the walls between us.  I didn't pay too much attention though.  I was too busy thinking about how I'd woken up twenty-five.  I was so busy with this that I went back to bed.  It was only 8 am.  I would have a long good day.

K.I.S.S.E.S.

My cold feet tell me I should have turned on the heat

I'm finally the owner of a FULL DRIVER'S LICENCE.  It came in the mail all the way from Canada.  But why did customs feel the need to open it?  I mean, they only opened it a little.  You can not in any way see inside the envelope.  I guess they hold it upside down and see if a white power falls out?  Don't send your home made baking powder by mail.  At least my picture looks good.  I needed a hair cut and now my driver's licence will suggest to anyone who is required by law to ask me for it that I am the handsome bassist for an Oasis cover band.

The kids at school all have box cutters.  Have I mentioned this before?  I have been wondering a lot about what that means.  A lot of people would tell you that if you give over a thousand kids knives, pack them 35 a room and leave them unattended several times a day there would be at least one set of stiches in a year.  So far so good though.  Do we think too poorly of kids, treat them as though their heads are held on by string and teach them to act accordingly?  Or is this a master stroke, hiding what every boy in the seventh grade really wants right in front of his face so he doesn't even realize how much stupid fun he could be having with it?...

Today was the first day of my 'beginner' after school speaking class.  Things were going alright and I got a little ambitious near the end.  You can't explain to a kid who doesn't understand you at all that you've made a mistake and your time is nearly up so you'll be brainstorming and coming at this lesson from a different and more 'you-don't-speak-English' angle.  You can't explain this to 9 kids either.  And so you don't.  You just tell them, "O.K.  Go.  Leave." and you smile and you hope their parents' are ambivilent enough not to ask them, "what did you learn in your special after school class today?"

Flat wheel of time

On Monday I had a different schedule on my desk than I'd had on Friday, but it's not like I didn't know it was coming.  I just knew that I'd prepare for the week when I saw it.  I had a lesson ready for the first grade; I had a lesson ready for the third grade.  That I bother to tell you this should be all the hint you need as to my first class of the day, but I'll just come out and say it: second grade.

Scribbling my notes for my lesson down on the back of my old schedule, I nearly didn't make it outside for what was my favourite part of the day.  

The students stood in a bored phalanx on our dirty soccer field.  The teachers faced the flag at attention.  The national anthem began.  The stairs up from the field to the main entrance of  our school creates as good a podium   as any.  A girl, a student, took the stage, white gloves and thin baton in hand and began to conduct her peers.  In the twelve hundred heads I saw one mouth open in song.  The teachers did not sing, the students did not sing, and the poor girl waved her wand in time for four minutes.  And why do you need a conductor if there is choir already on the track to sing along with?

For the last five months of my contract last year I devised a system to keep my days in order.  I have never worked a nine to five, forty-hour-a-week job for such a span of my life before.  I can't believe that Thursday has come after Wednesday again.  (Doesn't anyone notice this pattern?  Why do we let this happen ?!  Surely we can think of something better to come after Wednesday than Thursday every time.)  I like to set my Wednesdays (any days) apart.  Last years system of links was a good one.  It gave me something concrete at the end of it, and the rings give me an amazing recall of the day they represent.  But the tape I used has torn pieces out of whatever papers my roof and gives me damage deposit worries.  Also I am not up for making nearly three hundred and sixty five of those rings.  And so for the first time I specifically turn to you, dear reader, dear sixty-three unique hits that google analytics told me I received last week.  How can I mark my days?

Boston's Crab

Something magnificent happened to me.

The circle 3-1 takes me home from soccer.  It's a long bus route, but it means I don't have to get up and switch to the subway.  I just get to lounge there and read.

She sat down beside me and giggled, belaying the fact that she was anywhere from 39 to 46 years old.  She asked me to help her with a translation problem.  "What does this mean?" She was pointing at 'intellectual suicide'.  The article was a religious pamphlet about what it means for a woman to submit to marriage.  The context was 'Submission does not equal intellectual suicide.'  So I explained it to her.

"Oh," she giggled.  "English is made so different than Korean."

She asked me to explain why there was an arrow from the word 'submission' to this exact picture:

The pamphlet did not include the text explaining the maneuver. 

Serendipitous for this woman, I spent about four years of my early teens doing nothing but oozing professional wrestling.  I know all about Boston Crabs.  "The man on top is stronger," I explained, "he makes the other one submit.  He has put him into submission."  She giggled like she was eight and thanked me, although I am not certain she understood.  Regardless, I complimented her on her English.

"I have studied for ten years at bla bla bla.  Do you know bla bla bla?"

I told her I didn't.

"I am intermediate four years.  I ask the manager to take advanced classes but he say no."

"You must be working hard," I tell her.  "I'm sure you'll get to advanced one day."

She eyed me for a moment and began rummaging around in her purse.  Out came a silver locket.  Her fingernails worked in to pop it open and I played at sneaking a look over her shoulder.  She quickly turned it away from me, jealous of the first glance.  She studied it for a moment and then turned it.

"This is my teacher."

The locket was the size of an oblong quarter.  Inside was just about the bare minimum of a face.  The ears, most of his hair and some of the chin had been hacked off so that the rest could fit inside.  It was a man's face and I'd say he was twenty-three to twenty-eight.

"This is my teacher," she told me.  She was misty eyed.

"How long has he been your teacher?"

"One year," she told me.  "He left Korea.  He is going to be a lawyer."

"Ah, when did he leave Korea?"

"Seven years ago."

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I said that he must have been a very good teacher.  She held the locket a ways from her face and for a moment I was not there with her.  It was just the two of them.

"I study English so I can go to America and meet him."

I told her that he would certainly be surprised.  She smiled.

"People say I am very unique studying seven years for him."

I agreed.  I told her she was very unique and then it was suddenly her stop and she was jamming the locket back in her purse and scrambling for the doors.  "Thank you," she said.  "You are a handsome guy."

Now do I end this by saying that I sat back and basked in how lucky I am, or do I tell you I worried that she was snapping a cell phone picture of me through the bus window?  Because both are true.

Returning

I came back.

My favourite 'come back' scene is in Star Wars.  Episode 4, Luke is in the trenches of the Death Star and his own dad is about to blow him up with lasers.  At the last moment Han Solo flies in without anyone seeing him on radar, screams like a cowboy and misses Darth Vader.  That's a lot like coming back to Korea.

My favourite 'come back' scene is in Lord of the Rings.  Aragorn remembers that Gandalf is coming so he decides to manipulate a king to ride out of his castle so he can see him as soon as he shows up like a kid who begs to make a snowman in the front yard so he can see his dad as soon as he gets into the driveway for the shared custody weekend.  Gandalf shows up and Aragorn looks at him through the lense flare and is like "yeah?" and Gandalf is like "yeah." And Aragorn is like "really? A puppie?"  and Gandalf is like "yeah."

That's a lot like coming back to Korea.

My favourite 'come back' scene is from Dumb and Dumber because Harry loves Lloyd so much.  Those guys are so supportive of each other.  Later one even pees on the other guys back, which is a lot like coming back to Korea.

I'm back, and I'm screaming and I'm expectant and I'm disgusting.  And I am in the nick of time, at least according to me.