The Coat of Lost Dreams, or Notable Instances of In-Class Crying
Shelton Lee Bumgarner
Ahssa! Staff Writer
Emily came into class so happy.
She had a huge grin on her face because she had a new snow globe. It
was the first few seconds of class, before we were all settled in.
Terry and Jason were going bonkers as usual before they settled down.
"Look, teacher!" she said, holding up the snow globe as high as her
little hands would let her.
I turned away for a second to tell Jason to stop touching Terry or
vis-versa when I heard a crash and a crack. There was a huge puddle of
water everywhere and a dashed dream in a little girl's heart.
And thus began one of my occasional Korean Kid Freakout Crying Sessions
that I have had to deal with every once in a while since the Ahssa!
staff moved from Richmond to Incheon en masse.
Little kids don't just cry when something like that happens, they
explode into a supernova of emotion that lasts most of the 40 minutes I
have to teach them. The first time it happened a few months ago, it
tore me up so bad I had to drink a second bottle of soju just to get
over it. Now, it just rattles my cage just a little bit.
Something about Emily and her snow globe struck me as representative of
the Korean experience for expats. We come here with all these hopes and
dreams, only to have them dashed suddenly, unexpectedly and all within
the first few minutes of our reading class.
After Emily recovered, she gave me what remained of her snow globe. I
looked at it for a long time. "This means something," I thought to
myself. So I put it in my coat, telling myself that whenever something
horrible happened to me in the future, I would pull out the ruined snow
globe and think of Emily.
Little did I know that I, too, would lose my own snow globe.
You see, I, like, had this coat and stuff. I loved this coat. It was
warm, and comfortable and had all these wicked cool pockets. I had all
these visions of having the coat for years to come. It had such a
wonderful Korean vibe to it.
The Ahssa! staff went to Seoul for our Christmas party. We went to a
Greek restaurant in Itaewon. The staff could speak pretty good English
and they were quite kind. After eating, we went to this bar called Jay
Bar where some world renowned DJ was supposed to be spinning. I did the
usual thing of leaving my coat with the coatcheck, leaving it in bag
23...not realizing the bag itself was going to be left in Area 51.
At some point, we all got bored and decided to Gecko's, a popular expat
hangout nearby. I didn't feel like getting my coat so I left it with
the coatcheck and ran--in the cold--over to Geckos.
We came back a little while later, did some dancing, got bored again
and decided to go somewhere else. As we were leaving, it didn't take
too long to realize something was seriously wrong. They found Coy's
coat (we had left both our coats in the same bag for 2,000 won) but
they couldn't find mine.
My heart sank. My coat, my coat, my kingdom for a coat!
Ohmygod was I angry. But this being Korea, I knew I had no recourse.
The Jay Bar staff just stared at me and said for us to call them the
next day after 7 p.m. Bastards. Like that's going to fix anything. My
coat...with the snow globe...gone.
Top Three In-Class Crying Fits To Date:
1. A Girl Called Silly Lilly
I was in class, teaching, doing my usual shtick when I kept being
interrupted by a girl named Lilly. It got so bad that I looked at her
and said, "You know what? I'm going to start calling you "Silly Lilly"
since you're so silly.
Bad idea.
Not since Mt. Saint Helens has mankind seen such an explosion of
emotion without an old crotchy man dying because he refused to leave
the cabin he and the Unibomber had shared for 60 years as secret gay
lovers. I had no idea what had happened. It got so bad that I had to
get the head teacher to come in and ask in Korean what the hell had
happened.
"Did you call her silly?" she asked.
"Yeah, so?"
"Oh...many Koreans think "silly" is a really bad word, like calling
someone a "fool."
Oh.
2. Judy and Karl, lovers forever.
Every once in a while, you get little cute proto "couples" in classes.
Judy and Karl are an example of this. Karl is a character just in
general and every once in a while he'll show some proto-affection
towards Judy -- one time, in the middle of class, he bowed to her with
great flair when he gave her a pencil.
We were playing the "I Have A Secret" game where you give the kid a
word and everyone has to guess--in English-- what the word is. I used
the word "love," and didn't think anything of it when one of the kids
said "Judy and Karl!"
I said, with great fun-loving vigor "Yeah!"
Then Judy, usually the happiest of little girls, burst into a beet-red
sunflare of tears that sounded like a train charging its way through a
quiet country night. I could see the Doppler effect on her tears they
were coming out so fast. I told everyone in the class to apologize in
both English and Korean, hoping she would be ok before class was over.
All the other students wanted to keep going with the game, but I
stopped everything and told them to just cool it while I sorted this
out.
After what felt like 20 minutes of soft-spoken Alan Alda touchy-feely
sensitive pony-tail man talk, she finally, FINALLY calmed down. There
was a moment when she looked at me and the anger in her eyes was very
adult like. "How DARE you humiliate me like that during class!" they
said. I was a little bit scared she would hate me for the rest of her
life...until I saw her a few days later and she was nice to me.
3. I don't care, gimmy your hat.
There once was a time when I tried to channel my dad in class. I was
very strict and demanded that the front row of class always be full and
that no one wore hat. So, inevitably, a girl came to class one day and
wouldn't take her hat off. She was one of my best students and I was
surprised that she wouldn't take the damn hat off. I finally said so be
it and let the issue rest.
Then, like a moron, I snatched the hat off her head while she wasn't
looking.
Her reaction was swift and furious: TEARS! She was a little older, so
it was even more heart rending. These were the tears of an actual
adult-like human being, not those of a little kid that you can just
ignore. I think she probably was on her period and was feeling self
conscious. The whole experience tore me up so bad. I learned a valuable
lesson that day -- sometimes, the hat needs to stay right where it is.