Story of My Life

“In an effort to bring Korean and Western cultures together, today at the Korea Herald English Academy we are celebrating Halloween.”

Let’s just say that I’m not a super huge on Halloween.

I find myself green almost yearly, because I am a large man—think of things like The Jolly Green Giant, Shrek, the Incredible Hulk, and Frankenstein—and that is admittedly an overstatement in that for the last couple of years I have found myself green for various reasons to celebrate Halloween.

Well, my director is a special lady, and for the last two weeks she’s been asking me what I was going to be for the Halloween party and what color I want to be painted—even though I told her many times, “I don’t know” and “I really don’t want to be painted anything.” Her response was generally something like, “Whole teachers need painted.”

I eventually landed on the deliciously ambiguous Rock Star because I knew I would be carrying around my guitar all day anyway, and it just seemed to fit (Halloween is not all about blood and gore and ghouls, it’s about being whatever you want to do). The night before the party I found myself in need of some accessories. Okay, in total fairness, I hadn’t done any planning and preparation for this costume because that is not how I operate. There are people out there in the world that can spend the entire month of October planning their costumes, and to them I tip my hat. Some people I’ve talked to are talking about what they want to be next year the day after Halloween, and it’s a thing and it happens; however, I am not one of these people. I get very wrapped up in what I’m doing, and planning a costume moves to the background.

The deep background.

I am, after all, very wrapped up in doing whatever it is I’m doing.

But circumstances sometimes make decisions for us, and the fact of the matter was that I needed a costume before tomorrow.

Home Plus is like Wal-Mart… full stop. Surely there will be something in Home Plus in the men’s department or something I can use.
(My idea was to get a vest and some suspenders and call it good.)

In Korea, space (like in New York City) is at a premium, so places that would normally take up a square mile (like a Wal-Mart Supercenter) in Kansas City or some such place, builds up as opposed to out. Fair enough. I had never been to the third floor of Home Plus. I live on the ground floor where the food is. The second floor is electronics and toys and children’s things and there’s really no call for me to be there either.

So, I traveled up the inclined moving walkway (NOT an escalator, an inclined moving walkway) to the third floor and wandered around looking for the men’s department or the accessories or something. It took me about fourteen seconds to realize that something was odd. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

(As a bit of an aside, I don’t DO clothes shopping. It makes me nervous. I get all jittery and my hands start shaking and I get flush and my temperature rises and I absolutely must have someone there with me, reassuring me that everything is going to be okay.)

There was definitely something odd. No signs for Men’s and Women’s departments. That’s what it was.

Everything, and I’m sure the fashion minded of you out there can appreciate this, was sorted by designer (or maybe more appropriately, brand name).

Litmus is the only brand that I can remember off hand, but walking around Home Plus’s enigmatic third floor was a lesson in fashion. It made perfect sense, rationally and whatnot, but it gets a little bit more complicated.

Korea is a very metrosexual country. The reason Home Plus’s third floor is delineated in this particular manner is because everybody cares so much. To be perfectly honest, most of the children (male or female) in my Hagwon (Private English Academy in Korea) are very involved with fashion and the way they look and the presentation they are making to the public. All of which is fair enough. But in order to be truly fashion forward, there can be no color discrimination. One of the most popular colors of the Nintendo DS in Korea is pink. Boys, girls, whatever, pink is just a color. I think it’s kind of cool. I didn’t grow up in a world like that, but every boy has their pink shirts and their purples shirts, and they’re all just colors, and color adds color to life.

But when things are sorted by their designers and there is really no color out of bounds for either gender, what happens?

I couldn’t tell which racks were men’s clothes and which racks where women’s clothes, and obviously you can just go thumbing through them and figure it out, but given my already tremulous state in regards to the entire experience of shopping, I did what any self-respecting man would do. I ran away.

Yes sirree, I bolted out of there as quickly as my tired legs could get me out and hurriedly got back to my apartment to make myself a drink and calm down.

This did still leave a small problem in that I had no costume. I can be kind of resourceful sometimes, and I decided to go shirtless and draw tattoos on myself. They were brilliant, if I do say so myself.

When I got to school, the director said, “Ah, let me paint you.”

And that’s the story of how I wound up being a green Zombie Rock Star for Halloween at the Korea Herald English Academy in Ochang, South Korea and playing ABBA songs on the guitar for dozens of children and learning that You Are My Sunshine is kind of a scary song—look at the lyrics.