By Joshua Vise – August 10, 2023

Published in Creatures of Habit: An Ode to Oddity by CultureCult Press. Lulu: Paperback and EPUB

I see the suit and the smile, and I already know that I don’t want this conversation.  Still, my hurried pace isn’t enough to evade this heat seeking missile of a man, and I am soon intercepted.

“Oh, hello!  Hello! Oh…”

He reaches for my hand.

I offer it.  Let’s just get this over quickly.  In Korea, Christian proselytizers all follow the same playbook when talking to foreigners.  First, ask where the person is from.  Second, establish empathy and mutual connection.  Finally, introduce God’s word.

“Oh, where you going oh?”  His sentences begin and end with that all-too-common vocalized half sigh that says ‘my lack of language ability isn’t stopping this conversation’.

“I’m going to work.

“Oh oh.  Where are you come from oh?”

I’m not from Chicago.  There is nothing too sinister going on here.  So why lie?  Because the less these people know about who I really am, the more comfortable I feel. 

“Chicago.”

His eyes sparkle and his grin widens.  I can see the caps on his molars.

“Oh oh!  Windy City! Oh.”

I smile.  He continues.  I don’t want him to.

“Oh, I like Chicago because oh…”

He pauses to gather his thoughts.

“…I’m a big fan of…wind.”

We both laugh as I ponder just how he came to that conclusion.  Maybe he enjoys sailing.  Kites.  Pinwheels.

“Yeah, it’s good in moderation.”

I start to walk away, betting against the odds that he won’t follow me.  He matches my stride.

“Oh, so do you read the Bibleoh?”

“No.”

In an amazing feat of pigmentary gymnastics, his eyes both shine and darken.  Another heathen to bring to the fold.  Quickly, I lay down the trump card.

“And I don’t want to.”

The sparkle dissipates, and only the darkness remains.  To his credit, he knows when he’s been beaten, and takes the rebuff in stride.

“Oh oh.  Goodbye.”

He waves, and turns, returning to the crowded subway terminal.

It’s surprisingly tough to know how to feel during these confrontations (and yes, they are confrontations in that they are unsolicited and unwelcome).  How much of a conversation does one entertain before pushing this person away?  Knowing that my behavior as a foreigner in South Korea could lead to opinions about the foreign community in general, how aggressive should I be?  Do I try and challenge their beliefs with my own?  Would it make a difference?

I really wish these people wouldn’t put me in this situation. 

I glance behind me, and see that he’s snared another new friend.  I wonder what he will admit to this time.  A fan of wind again?  Other elements?  Water?  Imagine the conversation…

“Oh oh!  Saltuu Lake City?” he says, pausing for effect.  “Oh, I’m a big fan of saltuu.”

No matter.  I’ve got errands to run before I get to the office.

*****

I entered the HomePlus just as the store’s cheesy theme music kicks on.  With robotic precision, all of the employees, from checkout clerks, to shelf stockers, to people manning the sample booths, stand at attention.  A female voice welcomes all shoppers to the store with a high-pitched, youthful energy that makes it difficult to tell if the speaker is a woman, a school girl, or a Pixar character.  As this vocal equivalent of pink glitter confetti spews out of the public address system, the employees raise their hands in a friendly wave to everybody and nobody, an action that they repeat every hour, on the hour, morning to close.  Their beleaguered expressions stand in harsh contrast to their perfect posture.  “Indifferently erect” somehow seems an appropriate, if somewhat sexually misleading, description.

Homeplus is Korea’s answer to the big, boxy mega stores back home, which is possibly why I prefer it to the mom-and-pop style “mart”-type stores that can be found in every neighborhood.  At least where I’m from, the older generation sometimes seems to pine for the good ol’ days, when the owner was the person running the store, and was on a first name basis with every customer.  Not me.  Something about that experience just seems…judgmental.  I’ve already surrendered enough of my anonymity to the internet.  I don’t need to feel profiled every time I buy toiletries.  It’s odd to feel that my preferred choice of shampoo, snack, or batteries would somehow help the store owners construct their own idea of what constitutes a generic white male in his twenties in South Korea.  So THAT’S what they eat!

Plus, the mom-and-pop marts don’t have a bargain corner. 

At Homeplus, the bargain corner is where people get sent to when they are in economic time-out: recent divorcees, single parents, elderly folks on a pension, and college grads just starting out.  Shelves are lined with goods that must meet at least two of the four following criteria: a fast-approaching expiration date, Cyrillic script on the label, signs of having been tampered with, or themed packaging from a holiday that ended two months ago.  Simply slap a bright yellow “Price Reduced” discount sticker on the front, and within one to three days, it will be in the hands of some blue-haired coupon cutter.

Of course, being a recent college graduate myself, I have no compunctions over this kind of judgmental shopping.  I confidently snap-up a box of ramen that has been crushed into a rhombus, and some off-brand mouthwash, knowing that no dead-eyed, hands-in-the-air checkout clerk has the energy to come up with race-brand free associations, at least not here.  As she swipes my credit card, we very briefly make eye contact.  In that singular moment, I don’t see a person curious about this tall, lanky foreigner with the suspicious bottle of mouthwash.  Instead, I see someone internally counting down to the next round of compulsory corporate friendliness.

No matter.  I’m off to my own clown show.

*****

The elevator slowly creeks open, and through the glass door marked “Sungjin Kids English Academy”, I see Mrs. Kim waiting for me, her hands crossed decisively.  Something is up, and I’ve got the three steps between the elevator and glass door to try and guess what it could possibly be.

Ah, what the hell, why not be surprised?

“Good morning, Mrs. Kim,” I say in my most chipper morning voice.

“Mr. Son was playing the song again today.  I thought I told you to talk to him about it.”

“I tried, Mrs. Kim, but he doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Korean.”

Sungjin Kids English Academy occupies the fourth and fifth stories of a five-story building.  The second and third stories are home to a urology clinic, a fact I learned on my first day when an elderly man ruptured his catheter bag in the elevator, and which has since caused me to look at any small pool of water inside the building’s premises with deep suspicion.

Mr. Son owns the greengrocers on the first floor.  Recently, he somehow came upon the idea that high energy, up-tempo music would make his store more exciting, driving up his sales.  For him, this meant purchasing a CD of Dutch electronica he found in a convenience store bin and broadcasting it on a loop onto the sidewalk in an attempt to lure passers-by.  By itself, this would be annoying enough, but this particular CD contains DJ Issac’s 1998 hit “Face Down, Ass Up”.  The title of the song is actually the first of two sentences repeated incessantly throughout the bass-heavy track.  It is also the cleanest of the two.

“Well, you could have used your phone’s translator to tell him what it meant,” Mrs. Kim retorted.  Her crossed arms tightened through her sleeves like a designer anaconda.

“Why don’t you have one of the other Korean teachers talk to him?”  Or our secretary?”

“She did.”

“And?”

“He said nobody knows what the lyrics mean anyway, and his sales are up 10% for the month.”

I shrugged.

“There’s no way to argue against that.”

“You need to tell him how offensive that song is to you.  It’s the only way he’ll understand.”

What do I say to that?  Do I tell her that Mr. Son is probably right, and that most people don’t know or care about the lyrics?  That our students have likely heard worse things in their own language?  That maybe we should get some offensive Dutch dance music and increase our own profit margin?  Unwilling to say any of that, I choose the path of least resistance.

“I’ll try again.  When I leave for the day.”

“Okay.”

She turns, and marches into her office.  Her body language says “Just get it done”, and each tap of her heels is an exclamation point.  I’m left standing there, pondering exactly how to convince Mr. Son that, when it comes to apples and music tempo, correlation doesn’t mean causation.

Perhaps some additional information would help me form a strategy.  I turn to Elvira.

Elvira is Sungjin’s secretary.  She’s a cute, twentysomething Korean girl, of the type I would definitely have pursued if we met under any other circumstances.  Her unfortunate name was a gift from her hipster middle school English teacher who, tasked with assigning English names to the entire middle school student population, apparently had typed “vintage baby names” into Google and ran with the results.  Her English, passable in most respects, isn’t good enough to be one of our school’s English speaking faculty, a position she hopes to occupy after graduating from college.  She spends most of her day behind our reception desk drilling exercises in vocabulary workbooks. 

“Elvie?”

She finishes scrawling the word “refinement”, and looks up from her sheet of paper.

“Did you talk to Mr. Son today?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Kim told me you did.”

“Aaaaaaahhhhhh…”

Elvira draws the sound out. It usually fills the space in between understanding the intent of my inquiry and formulating a response in English.

“Yes, I talk to him yesterday.  About the music CD.”

“What did you say to him?”

Her eyebrows crinkle in a way I try hard not to find seductive.

“So noisy,” she says with a hint of melodramatic flair, pursing her lips.  Think unsexy thoughts.

“You told him it was noisy?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell him anything else?”

“Aaaaaaahhhhhh…”

I sigh. 

“You didn’t tell him about the lyrics?”

“I said the words is no good for students.”

“Did you tell him what the lyrics said?”

She shakes her head, and the air is suddenly tinged with a hint of…is it lilacs?  I never learned flowers.  Or shampoo.

“Why not?”

“I’m not saying that to him.”

I begin to sigh, which makes Elvira frown.  I catch the air in my cheeks and feign a hiccough.

“Elvie, do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Go down to the first floor.  Tell Mr. Son if he stops playing the CD, I will burn a better CD for him tomorrow.  With more exciting music.”

“Aaaaaaahhhhhh…now?”

“Yes.  If you’re not busy.”

“Okay!”  Her voice has the same bubbly pinkness as the Homeplus voice.  She may be on the wrong career path.

She stands, and for a moment, my eyes linger on her shirt.  While there are many somethings that could have caught my eye, and indeed have caught my eye in the past, one thing in particular snared my gaze.  Stenciled in bright colors across the chest was a smiling, wide-eyed, puffy cloud wearing a cowboy hat and straddling a horse.  It waved its rainbow lasso in the air.  Printed beneath the design was the following inspirational text:

“A compost pile of wealth and happy!  Why deny it?!  To the top, cowboy!”

Elvira notices my gaze, and tracks it to its source.

“So cute, right?”

If this shirt could be described as anything, cute would certainly fit.  The text could have lined the panties of an incontinent dictionary, but the cloud was certainly cute.

“Yes, Elvie.  So cute.”

“What does it say?”

This time, I stifle the sigh pre-esophagus.

“It says to have a nice day.”

She smiles at the validation. 

“My boyfriend get it for me.”

I grin, a suitable proxy for a sigh in this situation.

“Just tell me what Mr. Son says when you get back.”

I turn down the narrow hall leading to my shared office.  Before I can make it, I hear the sharp tap of Mrs. Kim’s exclamatory heels. Seeking shelter, I duck into the bathroom for a mouthful of bargain-corner mouthwash.  As the acrid burn swirls around my mouth, I attempt to triangulate her location via a series of familiar sounds.  The click of the shoes, briefly muffled by the runner carpet near the hall entrance.  The scrape of the wooden door on the threshold as she enters the teacher’s lounge. 

She could be waiting in there for me.  I take another cheekful of mouthwash.  Blech!  Mentally, I add ‘mouthwash’ to the list of things that are worth the additional cost, just under ‘multiple-ply toilet paper’.

A scrape.  Heels on tile, then on carpet, then on tile again.  The clicking of a glass door rocking against its door catch.  She must have stepped outside.

I crack the bathroom door and peek outside, wondering if all happiness is really just a compost pile. 

*****

Even a casual observer far removed from the intricacies of the Korean educational system could see it’s problems.  Ambitious parents, eager to see their child not only succeed, but dominate, regulate every waking moment of their lives.  Public school is followed by a series of private academies, known as hagwons.  Hagwons are usually divided by the topic in which they specialize.  There are taekwondo hagwons, math hagwons, science hagwons, music hagwons, and the like.  It is commonplace for a child to finish public school and attend three or more academies, each assigning homework that must be completed for the next day.  As such, the most highly educated Korean children resemble zombies, having been consistently denied a reasonable amount of sleep for years. 

The most prolific, though, are easily the English hagwons.  English is seen as the language of commerce and business, and therefore people who can demonstrate proficiency in it are assumed to be successful.  And what better way to show one’s ability in a foreign language than by passing a test.  In a competitive work environment in a downward spiraling world economy, even the most menial jobs now require verified language scores from one of several tests of English ability.  The Test Of English for International Communication (TOEIC) is probably the most common, though these days a variety of tests have sprung up to capitalize on the intensely profitable English testing market.  Hence, the National English Ability Test (NEAT), the Oral Proficiency Interview-Computer (OPIc), the Test of English Proficiency (TEPS), and the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).  Each test receives testing registration fees, and is able to license it’s name on books and other study materials.  Clearly, English is the language of business in more ways than one.

Most parents probably aren’t aware of what these acronyms stand for, but they’re damn sure that their child will score in the top percentile in all of them.  Children as young as three can be enrolled in some hagwons, but most students begin by age five.  For a short time, these youngsters make remarkable progress.  Colors, shapes, times, clothing, and the like are all quickly and relatively effortlessly devoted to memory.  But as their studies progress, emphasis gradually shifts from learning the language to passing the language test.  At that point, classes devolve into a series of fill-in-the-blank sentences, vocabulary sheets, and repeat after me dialogues.  Our school is no exception, and the most noticeable difference between a six year old student and a twelve year old student is the distinct lack of joy the twelve year old has when talking to me.  That, and the younger kids seem to be at the perfect height for punching me in the scrotum.

I walk into class, and immediately pivot to avoid what would have been a ball-shattering attempt at a high five.  The other students run for their seats, their squeals a mixture of delight and panic.  I set my basket of markers, erasers, and other classroom essentials on my desk.

“How are you today?”

“TeaCHER!” 

Heather is one of the brighter students in the class, but as with many of her classmates, constantly hammers emphasis on the wrong syllable with such a consistency that I wonder if it isn’t some great Korean inside joke.

“What?”

“MoTHER and faTHER and broTHER and mine and go to yagujang and gameuh.”

“You’re going to the baseball game this weekend?”

“Uh.”  She nods in agreement. 

“Wow.”

“TeaCHER!”

“What’s up, Chris?”

“Uh me too go to game and…”

Instantly he is out of his chair, and mimicking hitting a home run, complete with sound effects, egged on by the laughter of his classmates.

“Whap…boom!”

He spins as if his fist is the baseball, narrowly missing a classmate in the next chair.

“Neeeerrroooowwww!”

“Thank you, Chris.  Is anyone else going to the baseball game?”

“TeaCHER!”

Dandy used to be named Brian, until his mother thought that Brian was either too common or too masculine.  Apparently, she always wanted a girl, and thought that she could manipulate reality by encouraging the most effeminate aspects of his behavior.  As a result of this tinkering, he was excessively emotional, a fact that the other boys in the classroom exploited for their own amusement.  He wore the children’s’ equivalent of spaghetti strap tops and matching jogging pants to class.  I never did figure out whether his mother selected the name and outfit for him, or whether he chose it himself. 

“Yes, Dandy?  You’re going to the game, too?”

“Uh-uh.  Before weekend, Mom and together mobile station in the Daegu after Saturday.”

Heather turns to him, having somehow locked on to what had eluded me.

“Dandy, purple?”

“Uh.”  He shakes his head yes.  “Very purple.” 

They’ve taken the grammar off road.

As I struggle to wrap my head around the exchange that has just taken place, I feel a sharp pain in my asshole, as if I’ve spontaneously shit a dungeness crab.   I spin around angrily, doing my best to avoid reflexively swinging out at the kid as he scampers around me.  The others laugh and point while the perpetrator gleefully takes his seat.

“Dongshim!”

There is no American equivalent to the dongshim.  Picture a game of tag, except you make your fingers into the shape of a pistol, and the only spot that counts is the asshole.  Also, you never choose to play it.  A former coteacher at our hagwon once had a stapler in his back pocket as some unfortunate student attempted a dongshim.  The rumor quickly spread that Jarid had a steel anus.  I made a mental note to carry a stapler with me in my back pocket in the future.

“Okay.  Everyone open your books to page 15.”

“TeaCHER!  No book!”

“Alright, share with the person next to you.”

“TeaCHER!  Him no book!”

My head slank back on my neck.  I stared at the fluorescent lighting.  Oh, to be a dead moth.

“Okay.  Who else doesn’t have their book?  Raise your hand.”

Ten of the twelve students raised their hand.

“Okay then.  Just look at the board.”

I uncap my whiteboard marker and attempt to outline the most important bits of page 15 on the board.

“Today, we’re talking about the soft c and g sounds.”

Chris jumps from his seat hungrily.

“SausaGEE?”

“No, Chris.  Soft c and g.”

A knock at the door rescues everyone from a most mediocre educational experience.  It is Elvira, and she is motioning me into the hallway.

I turn to my ‘In case of emergency, break glass’ emergency lesson material: blank printer paper.

“Everyone, I want you to draw a picture of your favorite animal.”

The kids squeal with delight, and dig through their backpacks for their crayons as I step into the hall.  Elvie nods, slightly apologetically.

“I talked to the CD about Mr. Son.”

I let this one slide.  Coloring activities are effective, but will only buy me about five minutes before the kids’ attention shifts, and I want to get to my desk.  Why are my knees so weak?

“What did he say?”

“He said oranges and music to the store sidewalk loudly in the place to be.”

Ok, I can’t let that one slide.  Dandy’s little weekend wrap-up has already exhausted my ability to parse language, and anything more will push me over the top.  I can feel myself getting light-headed.

“Elvie, what?”

“Dutch blueberries keep horse clouds in rainbow purple baseball.  Okay?”

A wave of dizziness.  I just want to get to my desk.  If she can’t wrap this up, then I will.

“Can…is there…Dutch…bargain…coloring books…” I stammer.  What a time for my mouth to suddenly go rogue.

I take a knee, right there in the hall.  I can hear the emphatic tap of Mrs. Kim’s shoes rapidly approaching.  Elvie grabs my hand.  I just want her to get me to the teacher’s lounge.  Before Mrs. Kim gets here.  Before the kids see.  I look into her eyes, pleadingly.

“Elvie, to the top, cowboy.”

A compost pile of inky black unconsciousness.

*****

Bright lights.  A splitting headache.  I reach up to rub my temples, but something tugs at my arm.  It is the IV line, taped to my forearm.  The bag it is attached to slowly counts out seconds, drip by drip.

“Hello.”

The voice seems to come from somewhere near my feet.  Either my shoelaces have learned to talk, or I’m lying on a table.  I raise my head slightly, and see a doctor thumbing through the lab results clipboarded to the end of my gurney. 

“Do you know where you are?”

“In a gurney.”

My tongue still feels heavy in my mouth.

“You’re in the hospital.  You’ve been here for three hours.”

I try to sit up, but the doctor gently puts his hand on my chest.

“Just lie back and relax.  You are safe here.”

I comply.  My head sinks into the pillow.  I become aware of the soft beep of the electrocardiograph.

“What is the last thing you remember?”

I cup my hand over my eyes, trying to keep out the light, and struggle to think. 

“At work.  I had a class…”

“Okay, good.”  The doctor’s voice is reassuring, with just the tiniest hint of kindergarten teacher brio.  “What did you have to eat or drink today?”

“Nothing…I was going to have ramen on my lunch break.”

“Alright.”  He leans over me, a clinical, yet concerned look on his face.  “I need you to be completely honest with me.  ”

“Okay.”  I’m not totally sure what’s coming next, but I brace myself.

“Was this a suicide attempt?”

“What?!”

If it were possible to do a classic spit-take via IV saline solution, I would have done it now.

“You were brought here with severe methanol poisoning.  The most common situation in which this occurs is from a suicide attempt.”

I don’t need to take this lying down.  I prop myself up on my elbows.

“You think I would intentionally kill myself in front of a room full of children?”  I layer on the indignance as thick as my weakened state will allow.

“Calm down, I just need to ask.  So, to be clear, you weren’t trying to kill yourself?”

“No.”

“So, do you have any idea how you managed to ingest methanol?”

“No,” I repeat, flatly.  “I didn’t even eat breakfast.  All I did today was go to the store to…”

The realization hits me all at once.

“The mouthwash.”

“Mouthwash?”

“It must have been tainted with something.”

The doctor crosses the room, retrieves something from a steel counter, and returns.  He holds up a Ziploc bag with my bargain-corner mouthwash bottle inside.

“Your coworker, a Mrs. Kim, brought this in after we put you in the ambulance.  She’s in the lobby now.”

My headache worsens.  Can you set my IV drip to ‘stun’? 

“Mrs. Kim is here?” 

The doctor holds the bag in front of my face. 

“Sir, do you think that this is mouthwash?”  The disdain in his voice is evident.  Does the Hippocratic oath extend to hurt feelings?

I already know the answer, but why not go for it?

“It isn’t mouthwash?”

“This is bathroom cleaner and disinfectant,” he replies flatly.  “You could have killed yourself.”

Gingerly, I reach for the bag, which he hands to me.  I study the bottle’s label closely.

“Then why the smiling mouth full of white teeth on the back?”

He glances at the label.

“What teeth?  Those are tiles.”

I look again.  Tile.  An adorable anthropomorphic tile wall in the shape of a mouth, complete with hands on hips, poised triumphantly over a sparkling toilet bowl.  Damn you, excessive Korean cuteness.

Satisfied that I have fully internalized my own sense of moronic shame, the doctor takes the bag from my hands and returns it to the counter.  His back is to me, but I can hear his pen scrawling notes onto my chart.  His voice is at its most clinical, though the concern is gone.

“We’re going to keep you here for a few more hours to monitor your vital signs, but there doesn’t seem to be any damage that is permanent.”

He returns the clipboard to the side of my bed.

“And I suggest you read labels more carefully in the future.”

“But I don’t know Korean.”

My mind began to flit through the events of the day at a rapid clip.  I dwelt mostly on the people: the evangelist, the cashier, Elvira, and Dandy.  All of these individuals communicating with me, and me silently judging their mistakes, toilet cleaner in hand.

“Well, this is a good reason to learn.”