Strawberry Girl

Something interesting happened to me this weekend. Or rather, the lengthy litany of interesting things that happened to me this weekend was punctuated by something exceptionally interesting. I'll call her Strawberry Girl. You can thank my mother for that moniker; we were talking on the phone about interesting encounters in foreign countries (specifically, fruit vendors), and I asked, "Oh, that's right, did I mention the girl?"
Mom asked, "The fruit girl?"
And suddenly I knew I had to write this down.

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. It was getting on toward evening; the Earth was rotating the island ever so gradually away from the sun; the ungainly hump of Gyeryong Mountain (Gyeryong-san) would soon eclipse it. Earlier in the day I had donned a comfortable shirt, my favorite pair of beat-up Carhartt work pants, my new and exceedingly fatuous hat (purchased for 8,000 won at the open-air market in Gohyeon) and strode out for a constitutional. At its conclusion, I seated myself in the shade of a tree by the footpath that runs parallel to the river, opened my satchel and took out 50 Great Short Stories.

I read for a time. Pedestrians passed back and forth along the path behind me, but none of them gave me so much as a second glance, except for one chubby Korean boy in a yellow sports jersey who gave me a half-inquisitive, half-repulsed look as he walked by next to his father. Oh yeah, and Strawberry Girl.

I was just sitting there, minding my own business, reading The Man of the House by Frank O'Connor, when a young Korean woman and her mother came walking along. The middle-aged mother was wearing one of those sun visors made of tinted plastic that can be pulled down over one's face (Korean women have a strong aversion to direct sunlight). She was dressed in a baggy pink sweatshirt and sweatpants. The girl was rather cute, if I do say so myself. She looked about my age, give or take a year or two. She was wearing a baseball cap, a white T-shirt with some esoteric English phrase written on it, and rather tight spandex on her legs. She had typical Korean hair: long, straight, and raven-black. Paired with her heart-shaped and innocent face, however, it worked wonders.

Strawberry Girl and her mother sat down on the park bench directly behind me, and talked quietly. I found myself a little wrong-footed. Why'd they pick that seat right behind me? I wondered without malice. I was merely curious. Does that cute girl like me? Yes, that's how I think. Already my mind was conceiving the possibility I could never rationally hope for but dared to nonetheless.

Imagine my surprise when I found Strawberry Girl crouched close beside me.
"Hello," she said, in heavily accented but intelligible English. "Would you like a...?"
She trailed off. I looked down. She was holding an opaque plastic bag filled with juicy, medium-sized strawberries.
"Yes, thank you," I said, hurriedly and gratefully. She held out a likely-looking berry speared on a toothpick. I took it with repeated thanks, but didn't bite into it just yet. Make no mistake, I was exceedingly grateful that this Oriental angel had chosen to bestow some of nature's bounty on me. Regardless, that dratted suspicious part of my brain, inbred in me from living within 60 miles of Los Angeles for seven years, dictated that I be on the lookout for treachery and ill intent. What if, that part of my brain hypothesized, this girl and her mother are partners-in-crime, handing out drugged strawberries to unsuspecting foreigners and then waiting for them to keel over before hauling their lifeless bodies into the back of a van or the nearest shrub to strip them of valuables and vital organs? I held onto the toothpick and kept my face in neutral.
"Where are you from?" the girl asked, quietly and shyly but just as intelligibly as before.
"The U.S.A.," I replied. I would've said Miguk, the Korean name for it, but I felt almost as if that would be talking down to her.
"The S...A?" she repeated, quizzically. Before I could get the word out, Strawberry Girl's mother called out from her vantage point on the park bench.
"Miguk."
"Ah, ah," the girl nodded. "Miguk."

There followed an awkward silence. I stared at my still half-open book as the sociable part of my brain, slightly gobsmacked by the girl's generosity and her bold-yet-demure brand of cuteness, desperately groped for something to say...while that dingblasted suspicious region tried to figure out a polite way to get them to move on. Feeling compelled to demonstrate my goodwill, I ate the strawberry. It was every bit as juicy as it looked, and somehow more delicious for having been handed to me by a pretty girl.

Alas, fortune favors the bold and passes over the hesitant. After a few more seconds of silence, the girl rose, said goodbye, and walked away with her mother in the direction they'd been going. I went back to my book and waited. Sure enough, my conscience came howling rabidly out of the nether regions of my brain, and I began to kick myself. Why is it, I asked myself, that I could not muster the good grace and gratitude to be more forthcoming with conversation? I'd thanked her profusely both as she gave me the strawberries and as she was leaving, but as far as scintillating discourse was concerned, I'd dropped the ball. I couldn't have been angrier. Stuff like that doesn't happen every day, I realized. How many times in your life are you going to be sitting under a tree by a river in some far-flung land reading a good book and have a lovely native come up to you (a scary foreigner) and offer you the pick of the cornucopia? I ask you, how many?

I felt like punching myself in the face. I went through the rest of The Man of the House in a sort of obstinate sulk. One final twist remains. I'd put 50 Great Short Stories down for the day and had switched to One Piece, Volume 6, when suddenly I looked up and there they were. Strawberry Girl and her mother had reached the climax of their stroll and were returning the way they'd come! My chance to make amends had been unexpectedly granted! Without hesitating I hailed them as they passed.
"I forgot to ask you!"
"What?"
"Where are you from?"
"Korea!" She laughed and spread her arms wide as though to encompass the whole countryside.
"I know!" I grinned. "But Geoje-do?"
She smiled, nodded and said yes.
"Ah!" I said, as though I was tasting a fine wine again after a long hiatus from it. I said something about Korea being beautiful. Then we said goodbye one last time and parted with smiles on our faces. Hers might have been puzzlement, or that genuine warmth one feels when one communicates successfully with a stranger, and when two young people of the same age exchange a few familiar words. I certainly hope it was the latter.

Mine was.