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[Ya-ta Boy]

A Foreword to the Wise (and a disclaimer):

Our story takes place in an imaginary school for adults at an imaginary time in the recent but fictional past. About 20 (maybe more, maybe fewer) foreign teachers work at this institution of higher education and are warehoused a short walk away. Typically, each teacher is in charge of 10-12 students and is paired with a co-teacher who also has a class of students at a similar level. The two teachers commonly swap classes once or twice a week �so the students can hear another voice�. The students, all adults, live in a dorm next to the school, and may only leave campus on weekends.

The following tale is entirely, 100%, fiction. Any resemblance to real, actual honest-to-god persons is completely coincidental and purely an accident of the human condition. That�s my story and I�m sticking to it.


The Tale Its Ownself

Our story opens on a dark and stormy�morning, back in the depths of winter, a winter of discontent. Our hero, The Colonel awoke to big, fat, soft snowflakes drifting past the window. He sighed thinking about the busy day ahead, moving leaving 수왐프빌, the sad little town with a sad little stream and its sad little bridge and into Seoul, the center of life, the universe and everything, where all English teachers� hopes and dreams are realized, where students are motivated, the women are beautiful, frozen peas are available only one short hour away by subway and square swamps with a plethora of plastic bottles floating amid the scum are far, far away.

The Colonel muttered, �OK, Harland, it�s time to get on with it,� and rolled over, winced once, dug around under his ownself, found the chicken bone and tossed it out of the bed and soon followed it. �That�ll be the last of chicken legs from Lee�s Spicie Chicken Restaurant & Church in this life; no more pre-death roosters crowing at dawn and no more church choir rehearsals before the sun comes up on Sunday mornings. Ahhh, I�ll kinda miss that rooster with a hoarse crow. He lasted longer than most. Reminded me of Rod Stewart.� Then added as an afterthought, �If there�s a god there�ll be no more Lee�s Chicken�No more banners across main street either,� then with a shrug, � but then fame and glory weren�t always what they were cracked up to be,� he told himself, and proactively thought as per his nature and punching his left fist into his right hand, �Tomorrow is another day, even if it is for the same amount of won. No more god-awful Mondays at the middle school.�

Without a hitch, the moving van guys (mvg�s) arrived on time and did their thing and, with the assistance of an mvg, the Colonel in his car followed the moving van north and west through the swirling snow toward that promised land, the center of life, the universe and everything sacred and holy to English teachers, that Seoul, the soul of northwestern South Korea.

Onward, into a new day a new city and a new life�

Pulling off the expressway, the snow behind them, the mvg guy driving like an ajosshi with a grudge (�네, best driver 임니다!�) and The Colonel, riding shot gun, hunched down for the past couple of hours so he couldn�t see the near misses with his car, the sun breaking through the clouds, dared hope the new day, the new job, the new city would be a good and productive chapter in his life, far, far from teenage angst. As instructed, as they passed the pig restaurant that you can see on the right as you start down the road to the school, the Best Driver mvg pulled out his hand phone and called Mr. 김#1, the new boss, to tell him they had arrived. The Best Driver mvg reported that Mr. 김#1 would meet them at the apt in a few minutes. What a smooth beginning to a new chapter!

Sure enough, parked in front of the first floor apt that had been pointed out after the interview (�Can you really start next week? Sign here!�) there was no Mr. 김#1. There was no Mr. 김#1 after 10 minutes nor after 15 or 20 minutes. The first inkling of reality began to crack the shell of hopefulness, not only of the Colonel, but also the mvg�s. They were getting antsy. And hungry. Best Driver mvg pulled out his hand phone and called Mr. 김#1 again. No answer. A patient wait of 2 minutes and another call was placed. Same non-response. Fifteen more minutes of waiting. Another call to Mr. 김#1. Missing in action.

After a brief huddle of the mvg�s, they declared a work stoppage (what work?) and said it was lunch time. They piled into The Colonel�s car and everyone went off to the pig restaurant up the street for their free lunch on the Colonel�s dime. A good time was had by all, but The Colonel thought a bit of soju couldn�t hurt, but it was not to be. Best Driver called Mr. 김#1 one more time and got an actual
answer this time; he said he�d be right there. So off the Colonel and the mvg�s went again. And sure enough, Mr. 김 was not there.

Ten minutes later, Harland The Colonel, giving in to the peer pressure of the mvg�s who were all less than half his age and triple his agility, climbed up onto the back of the moving van, up and over the railing, pried open the screen and window onto the balcony and then the big sliding door into the first floor apt. �호리 크랲오라�, the Colonel exclaimed, looking at the blackened streaky floor that could be seen between scraps of newspapers, discarded clothes, broken furniture and pieces of wall paper. �Mr. 김#1 swore this place was good to go.� Wandering around, he saw that the bathroom was a hotbed of The Plague-in-the-Making. There was no seat on the toilet and every surface was crusted with something black and or gray. One of the bedrooms was piled to the ceiling in old furniture. And it was freezing. �He must have re-assigned me to a different apartment. This just can�t be mine.�

Fortunately, or perhaps not, just at this moment The Colonel heard a door open upstairs. Knowing that all the teachers at the school lived in the same apt, Harland took heart, thinking that this might be a teacher who would know something worth knowing about which apt he was assigned to. He opened the door, planning to accost the teacher on the stairs as he/she came down, but of course exerting his inherent charm.

The Colonel chose to ignore the �dum de dum dum� he heard, thinking someone must be watching a DVD of the old Dragnet TV series originally made when both The Colonel and Colonel Potter were young. That would prove to be a mistake, but our Colonel didn�t know it at the time�


(End of Part I)

[Ya-ta Boy]

Part the Second
The Colonel stepped out into the hall, looking up with a hopeful expression. What he saw was a fine figure of a woman, maybe 44 x 40 x 46, descending. She glanced at him from the half-landing above and before he could say anything, she turned back, gave a kind of frown and a shake of her head and a back and forth motion with her hand. �Hi, I�m The Colonel, the new teacher. I have a question.�

�Hello, people call me FOOC,� she responded. Deciding to hold off on the obvious question of why people call her FOOC, mostly because the frown stayed on her face, The Colonel started to ask his question about the apt, but she beat him to the punch. �Vaht iss it you vant? Hurry up. I must get verk now.�

�Um, at my interview Mr. 김#1 said this was my apt and yesterday on the phone he said it was clean and ready for me. But it�s a mess. I think maybe I�ve been reassigned. Is that possible? Is there another apt open?�

�How iss it I should know dis? At verk day tells me nutting. Day tells nobody nutting. I must go now.� All the while, FOOC was descending the stairs, in a looming kind of way.

�Oh dear,� thought The Colonel. �Uhhh, thanks. Have a nice day�. With that, he withdrew into the apt leaving the stairwell open so FOOC could pass, thinking, �German teacher? Angry, bitter German teacher? Don�t blame me. I�m American. (Being from Kentucky, The Colonel preferred not to call himself a Yank.) It was the Brits that beat you in that war.�

Standing on the balcony, blocking the mvg�s from bringing anything in over the railing, The Colonel noticed that FOOC had a bandage and a sandal on one foot, but was showing no evidence of it impairing her movement. She walked to the corner of the next building and stopped. While this was happening, a youngish man came out of the building below The Colonel, got in a car, a gray Avante, and drove to the corner of the next building and stopped. FOOC opened the door and got in. It appeared to the Colonel that she leaned over and kissed the driver. �Ah ha! That sly fox!� thought Harland, solving the mystery of the mysterious gestures in the stairwell, �FOOC just finished a nooner.�

End of Part II