True Stories

9/10/08

This story is a couple days old, but it’s easily the most interesting story of this week for me by far.

I stayed in Bundang after school today so I could stay and enjoy some cheap Chinese food in Sunae. It was only the second week in a row I did this, but I felt the recurring event was significant enough to bestow upon those two days (and any other future occurrences that may follow) the alliterative nickname “Mandu Mondays” today at lunch. Pretty cool name I think.

Anyways, the story begins on my way home made delightful by the fact that I would be sitting on a bench as opposed  to standing on the subway the whole ride home. It was at this bench where I was periodically removing my iPod earphones to make sure Taking Tiger Mountain wasn’t audible to the rest of the bench. I really hate sitting next to people whose drum machine-synth mixes leak out their headphones. My philosophy is that assuming others share the very same pet peeves as myself puts us one step closer to Utopian territory.

Then this kid (some would say he “happens to be black“) sits down next to me in the only vacant seat available. I didn’t notice it at the time, but he was considerably younger (my estimation clocks in at around 14) and shorter than I am.

He then nearly crawls up in a ball and hunched his back over in what looked like the most uncomfortable position one could possibly resort to in order to read a wallet-sized subway map. He reads it, scratches his dreadlocks and reads it again. The distance between the map and him is intimately close. He seems to be in distress. I ask if he needs help.

“No” he replies, without any eye contact or a pause. He’s not impressed by my perfect English, nor what I thought was a completely selfless offer of help. He responds as if I questioned his intelligence by asking him if he likes Tim Allen Christmas movies in a monotone word that interrupts his map-looking-head-scratching routine for a split second. My philosophy feels more valid then it did 5 minutes before; I never did like it when strangers came up and talked to me either.

As the P.A announces the next stop, a few more seats become available. The kid next to me jumps up and starts walking away, and I think about how weird it is that he would get off here, at a one-line station, since he had spent all that time looking at his map. Instead he hurries to an empty seat on a neighboring bench, and continues to look confused. I take that as a sign that he’s trying to avoid me, as if I was only a chapter of a series of racial hate crimes that day. I immediately change my iPod album to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

I think about approaching him in a friendly way and doing a combination of apologizing and clarifying that I had not meant any sort of offense if he felt I did (still not sure how that is possible). I come to conclusion that it is the best idea for the situation, but ultimately decide against it because I just don’t have the words for that. I get home. No new Smodcast this week caps off what the worst evening I’ve had in a while.

I’ve been thinking about this for the past couple of days, and my best guess is that the kid does experience a lot of negative attitude with racial overtones being an overwhelming minority in the overwhelmingly homogeneous country of South Korea on a day to day basis. To him, racial belittlement might have been the most logical archetype to fit my asking him is he needs help. All of this must get in your head pretty bad when you’re only about 13.

Lost in translation.

I feel bad. He feels bad. Neither of us meant it on each other. It kind of sucks.