...say it in English so no one else understands you.
I openly admit to being the worst kind of person. Well, okay I'm not really a bad person I'm just...frank. This has earned me both titles of "refreshing" and "bitch". I say I'm just honest. What is a frankly honest person do to but fully utilize her foreign skills to say whatever she wants whenever she wants it?
I know that a big fear xenophobes have is that foreigners are talking about them in their native language. Well, who cares? Does it honestly hurt anyone if someone has a little laugh because your shoe is untied? I know enough Korean to know that people have talked about me while looking me in the eye and I promise the world didn't end.
So for that reason I felt no guilt spending Saturday night saying whatever I wanted wherever I wanted while out in public in mixed company. I was with a new foreign friend who shares my unfortunate sense of humor and bold realism, what else were we to do?
It started while waiting for some friends outside of a movie theater. Just across from us leaning against a cement wall was a Korean guy in skinny jeans, a leather jacket, shaggy auburn hair, just slouching. He looked 16 which I've learned means he's probably about 25. We waited for our friends for a hours (they were heading up from a day trip out into the city and weren't sure when they'd arrive), and in that time this guy just paced the corner and every time a pair of long haired girls walked by, he'd go up and talk to them, they'd blow him off, and he'd scuff his feet and look down with his hands his pockets, but ultimately move on with his life and wait for the next pair.
"Korean Aladdin at 6 o'clock." Says my friend.
"Ah, no way. He's totally a drug pusher." Say I.
"Or an organ harvester. Less likely, but more intense."
Korean Aladdin paced our shared block for two hours, never dropping his game. And for two foreigners stuck waiting for friends, creating his increasingly more detailed back story became the best game we had ever heard of. Would we have done it back home if it were an American guy? Most likely. But there's something very great and terrible in "getting away with" saying whatever you want.
No naturally this game continued over pizza in a window booth at a second story pizza joint.
The best part of the night was when a couple walked by below and the woman, who was wearing stupid heels, stepped onto a grated sewer cover. Her pointy stiletto went right through the hole and she fell to the pavement. Her boyfriend/husband fell all over himself to help her- took her bag, helped her stand, brushed her off. Even my friend and I had nothing snide to say, we were both worried she had broken an ankle. But then it happened.
While embracing his injured and embarrassed partner, the man looked up, saw us looking down, pointed, and proceeded to grin and then LAUGH. And then we laughed back. And she knew nothing about it (I can only assume he was laughing silently).
I have nothing inspired to say about knowing a foreign language and the verbal freedom it gives you. I'm sure there are volumes on the benefits of multilingualism: what it does for your brain, for your cultural awareness, for your ability to connect with people. All the science is there. But all I use it for is to point out when someone has a bad perm or a camel toe.
So the moral of the story is yes, xenophobes, foreigners ARE talking about you right to your face. But you're talking about them, too. And fair is fair. So just enjoy.
And I guess falling is universally funny.
And don't wear heels. Ever.
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