Archive for February, 2009

This just seemed to hit right at home for me.

Here is an essay that I wrote for my English class.  I think it explains what I am suppose to write about well enough for me to not have to explain.  This is the rough draft, the second draft is due Thursday 2/5/2009, and the final is due on Tuesday 2/9/2009.  If anyone is eager enough to give me some feedback including spelling or grammer errors, I would appreciate it.  I am getting a grade on this so any feedback is welcome, just post a comment.

For the past few weeks we have been throwing around the term “pop culture” in my English class. One of the questions that we were asked was if someone who has never been in the United States before wanted to know about pop culture, “what would I tell them”. To be honest upfront I would probably tell that person bluntly, “for your own sake, ignore it”.

Pop is the abbreviated term for popular. To coin the phrase, “Pop Culture”, would mean to refer to celebrities, musicians, and the like, as to what is currently streaming across the “tweetosphere”. Tweetosphere, is a term derived from the popular micro-blogging site Twitter. User’s post, short messages summarized in 140 characters or less, called tweets. The hottest items are said to be travelling across the “tweetosphere”. Twitter is one of the fastest methods of exchanging information among multiple friends at once. From telling everyone that they are running late, to sharing a link to a news article, video, or MP3 download. These micro-bloggers are the newest form of word-of-mouth gossipers.

If someone asked me about a year ago what any of this meant, or what pop culture really was, I would have turned up my nose and walked away in disgust. I easily grew tired of watching the constant news coverage of Paris Hilton’s battle with the court over her going to jail. Is this really a hard concept to grasp? Break the law go to jail. Why are we so easily amused?

Barack Obama is currently the most followed person on Twitter, with over 225,000 people following him. Despite that he has only made three posts since Election Day. To place this in perspective, CNN is in second place with just over 125,000 users following. Typically I would follow politics and other major news regardless, it’s just ironic for me that Obama is flipped onto the pop culture circuit.

I am for the first time since high school, (which for me was over in 1996, gasp) following some of today’s pop culture. After a short lunch with a much younger friend recently, I am feeling more pressured to broaden my view on pop culture in general. She told me that it’s rude to “text at the table”. It is? I didn’t even know what a text message was until I was 23. Even then a cell phone was too expensive for me to own.

This leaves me little choice but to follow pop culture. Little things go beyond my knowledge by staying out of touch. Obviously I don’t want to be rude. I didn’t have any parents around to tell me about texting table etiquette at the age of 23. When they did come around it was across several state lines and they were just as clueless as I was.

I hate pop culture, and nearly everything it stands for. However, by ignoring it I get shut out to the loser corner, with a pair of rolled eyes and an “as if” statement. I would tell anyone that is trying to learn about pop culture for the first time, “good luck”. Then request some type of contraption similar to the one in Clockwork Orange, in order to retain enough information in a short time period, to be able to carry on a single conversation, and then repeat for the next day.

Ironically today there seems to be a lot more information to absorb. It makes me miss high school, all I had to do was lay down and listen to the radio or watch TV. Barely anyone had a computer, and nearly no one had the internet.

For the past several months I have been going back and forth over trying to reason with my wife and get another chance to try and save our marriage.  Some days I have called it quits, other days she has called it quits.  The feedback I get from everyone is torn right down the middle.  Half tell me that marriage is always difficult and we should both try harder to salvage what we have.  The other half tells me that enough is enough, and to cut my losses.

So let me ask everyone:

• How would you feel if you couldn’t tell your wife a joke you heard, because she couldn’t understand the innuendo or slang?
• How would you feel if you couldn’t go to a movie because one of you won’t understand any of it?
• How would you feel if you had to explain every piece of culture from a “jack-o-lantern” to a “thanksgiving turkey” and your wife will never be interested.
  
• How would you feel if everything you said to your wife had to be blunt and to the point?  (no slang or abbr.)

In case you didn’t know by now my wife is Korean.  She found me online looking for someone to practice her English with.  I was stationed in Korea with the Army which she saw, and knew that I had good English skills (or assumed that I did) and was in the same time zone as her.  Ironically we were only 20 minutes apart.

Talking with her at first my Army friends made fun of me because I had to talk so slow.  Dohee (pronounced “dough” as in bread, and “he” as in him), had to use those pauses in between each work to translate what I was saying.  Over time this corrected itself and I was able to talk faster.

Before meeting me, Dohee had never been to the United States, and barely knew anything about it.  Of course there is the history that everyone reads about in the text books, or the war in Iraq that we all see on TV, but that says nothing of our culture.

When they teach English in Korea, they teach proper English.  They also mix Australian, Great Britain, and American style English dictionaries.  They don’t teach slang and innuendo’s. Why is this a big deal?  Imagine having someone close to you in which you couldn’t fully share a joke, or watch a sitcom together.

A joke that takes a twist on the English language such as, “Two men walk into a bar, you would think the second one would of missed it”.  Dohee would never make the connection, because she is translating the word “bar” into the Korean word for a “drinking bar”, which is completely different than the word for a “steal bar”.  Imagine if the joke read, “Two men walk into a night club, you would think the second one would of missed it”.  If I told you that, you would think I am an idiot.

Then of course what teacher in a formal society such as Korea would teach sexual innuendo’s?  Yet, that includes half of the programming on TV.  The only thing we could really watch together was the Disney Channel cause the grammar was on a level she could understand.  Her favorite TV show is “Drake & Josh”.

Every Christmas in Korea, Dohee’s family worked in a bakery they run.  There were no presents, no tree, not a single decoration.  We would get a cake from the bakery then order some food. Every restaurant was open and still delivering.  In my family Christmas was a big deal.  My parents would max out credit cards just trying to make a bigger celebration.  Even now my parents live at home with just the two of them, all kids have moved out, and they still put up a tree.

Yet, I married someone who tells me that its wasteful and bad for the environment to cut down a tree just to throw it away in a month.  While she may be right, there is meaning in it too me.  Something that I can’t teach her and don’t even know how to begin explaining.  Regardless she will never share my enthusiasm.

Any joking, teasing, flirting, for either of us is next to impossible cause its either portrayed as one of us is an idiot, perverted, or grossly amused with something that shouldn’t be funny.  How do you keep a relationship alive without a little humor or spontaneous romance?  How do you enjoy the holidays if your wife thinks they are foolish.

You want cut down a tree, bring in the house so the needles can fall off, the baby can eat them, and I have to vacuum several times a day, just so we can throw it away, in a month?

You want to cook a huge turkey for one meal, and just the three of us?  We can’t eat all that food, its a waste of money.  Buy a chicken its smaller.

I could sit here all day and write about scenarios such as these.  We have gone to counseling, we have tried being separated, but its been 5 years.  The towel is now in shreds from getting “thrown in” so many times.  (she wouldn’t understand that pun either)

It is sad, and I think both of us wish it could work.  We can force ourselves to make it work, but for what reason?  Because of our daughter?  Because in the eyes of God divorce is wrong?  Because dating sucks?  Maybe those are good reasons, but by walking away now, we still have our heads held high and our dignity in tact (well…., some of it anyway).

Her name is on my bank account, and she has her own debit card in which she can take any money out of my account at any time.  This way is better cause she takes her child support, and I don’t pay it.  If she needs more she asks and we talk.  There is no waiting for a check in the mail or anything, she has what she needs.

I am still paying for her cell phone and I haven’t changed the passwords to my e-mail or anything else.  We still trust each other and talk like we are old friends.  We are a divorced couple that holds no hard feelings.  I trust her with my money and my daughter.  While some things have changed, a lot that normally change after a divorce has not.

It has long since been over, I just refused to believe it.  I still care for her, and will still hold her dear for some time.  The logic over everything keeps me clear, it just can’t work between us.  There was a spot of lust we mistaked for romance, and now that is all over.

Its better this way, our daughter is too young to ever be truly affected.  She will grow up with happy parents, its just we won’t live together.

Not all decisions are easy ones.  This one took some time to come to realize.  But I think we have made the best choice for everyone.

When two worlds colide, everything comes crashing down.