Just Say Yes

One of the advantages of living in a place like Korea is the option of being linguistically clueless.  Conversations sometimes involved little more than pretending to understand local taxi drivers and convenience store cashiers.  Pretending was easy: I maintained eye contact, occasionally nodding my head and making a short ‘hm’ sound every thirty seconds.  My students used to do this when I would explain Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar.

           

But here in Korea, there’s a tacit agreement:  I’ll pretend to understand you if you pretend to understand me.  You talk for two minutes, then it’s my turn.  All questions must be of the yes/no variety, and should predictably call for a yes answer.  One time a taxi driver had asked me a series of questions over the span of our short drive, to which I dutifully responded yes.  He seemed content with all of my yes’s until one yes left him startled. Whether he had asked if I wanted to turn right or if North Korea should be bombed, the answer clearly should not have been yes. 

            “Yes??!” he said incredulously.

    
     

“Oh, I mean…no!” I corrected myself.

           

“Yes, yes,” he confirmed, smiling, and continued to talk with no further questions.

           

Back in America, I'm finding that the yes/no conversation rules aren't followed.  Here, it's all about making snappy comments to show off our wit.  Though I can't prove this scientifically, this is especially true among men.  Our conversations tend to go like this:

A:  Witty comment

B:   Witty retort

A:  Touche!

B:   (Scurries away before next witty comment)

Nowadays I find myself on the losing end of these verbal jousts. My witty remarks don’t seem to come to me until long after the moment has passed, much like George Costanza’s Jerkstore line.

A few days ago I got a verbal frappacino from the barista at the local Caribou coffee.  I walked in around 9am, well before the first intelligent thought had passed through my head.  The barista had been downing shots of espresso for hours by then.  When he noticed my blue t-shirt adorned with a picture of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home, it was game on.

“Thomas Jefferson! 3rd president of the United States, author of the Declaration of Independence, though he did own more than 500 slaves," he exclaimed.

“Yeah…um.” I responded.  As a graduate of Mr. Jefferson’s university in Virginia, I should’ve had something to add.  I did a little Google search of relevant information in my brain, but it returned zero results.  "Quite a guy," I mustered.

“So what can I get you this morning?”

“Just a coffee?” I ask, wondering if it’s too late for this.

“Big one, small one, fat one, tall one?” the barista rhymed.

“Ummm."  I produced the 'whatever is fine' look.  Though I'm 6'3" I felt much shorter at this point.

“Thomas Jefferson would go with a large,” he concluded.

I let out a single, labored ‘ha’, slowly stepped away from the queue, and immediately wondered why I had left Korea.  Sometimes it's nice to live in a world of complete and total ignorance.