TERROR! My Horrifying Run-In With … KOREAN PEOPLE!
“Uh-huh. Yeah!” she retorted in almost perfect English, smiling intently.
Thus they made their scary, middle-class, hard-working, well-mannered, well-dressed (for a hike, at least) and education-addicted selves past me. They probably owned their own businesses, had moved here with little, amalgamated to American society, networked with the right people, and had worked hard to get the comfortable, productive, righteous lives they so seemingly exuded. Needless to say, you can imagine how I was so panic–stricken. These people undoubtedly obeyed our laws, paid more than their fair share of taxes, donated to charities, and were raising the most chilling of children; you know, the fiendish kind that sit in class and pay attention, do not “act up,” don’t do drugs or get knocked-up, knocked around or drop out of school; the sort that will no doubt blow through college like Jeff Gordon over the Indi 500’s finish line and end up running their own businesses and employing fellow Koreans … that is after their attempts of employing other Americans fails miserably. What do Koreans have against hangovers, neck tattoos, selfish attitudes and a bloated senses of entitlement in the first place.
And so my horrific run-in with the growing, future runners of America came to an end. They passed by, leaving me only drenched in the remnants of what was once good old American humility and middle-class modesty, and that oh-so contemptuous desire …to succeed. I was lucky to escape their self-effacing clutches with my life!
I thanked God afterwards for allowing me to pass by these maniacs unharmed. I was on a path in the woods; so were they, but also on a path to something much different and greater. And as I breathed in relief and trudged on, hearing their chatter fade away –- English-to-Korean, then Korean-back-to-English, I could not help but think: “Goodbye, ye crazed Asian fiends. The future belongs to you … and America, too. Please do better with it than we have.”
If only other ethnicities in America were just as “terrifying.”
Cheers to a simple encounter in the woods (and with the future)!
The preceding is satire — sort of.
