an F-bomb in K-Land

So, says the storyteller, sitting in a chair by the fireside, a whiskey sour in his hand, did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally dropped the F-bomb in front of my students?

It was 2008. I was 22 years old, and teaching English under contract in South Korea.

Now, as much as I try to deny it, I'm rather sensitive about my image. Not in regards to my appearance or personality, oh no. Knock on my door any given day and I'm liable to greet you in a pair of stained cargo pants and a ratty old T-shirt with a stretched collar. The hand I'll extend for you to shake will likely be the one I was picking my nose with five minutes earlier. Spending time with me is a crash-course in sexual innuendo, judgmental commentary, godawful puns and (consequently) social tolerance.

I'm sensitive about my image as an American, though. One of the things I dread about traveling is being perceived as the "ugly American." You know, one of those strident, bulbous, glassy-eyed jingoists who came to Paris because they wanted to see "the LOOV-ruh," and spent the whole time complaining about how unfriendly the natives were and how weird and different everything was. These folks put up a stink if they can't find somebody who speaks English (fancy not finding an English speaker in a foreign country!). They never bother to read up on their destination's cultural and social mores, and therefore unknowingly and repeatedly commit crimes of etiquette. They mispronounce names so egregiously that passers-by are physically sickened. And they try to touch or carry away a piece of every monument or museum piece they see. These are the people who poke fun at the Queen's Guard standing outside the gates of Buckingham Palace; send sushi back and ask for it to be cooked longer; and spend their entire Mexican vacation in a deluxe resort and come away twittering about what a nice country it was. Loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless and ethnocentric, as Wikipedia puts it.

Every red-blooded American is allowed to jones for a double cheeseburger with fries while they're overseas, but jeez, people, don't harp on it. Just because the United States is the greatest country in the world doesn't mean you have to remind everybody within earshot about it. I don't want to be one of those ugly Americans. I am sometimes, but I try not to be. Americans have acquired such a stigma that I fancy I can see a little twinge of displeasure come into foreigners' eyes when I tell them where I'm from. The old "Oh-God-he's-an-American-this-is-going-to-be-just-great" kind of twinge. Not that I care, of course. I'm busy thinking I'll bet you've never fired a gun in your life, sucker. Bet you wish your country had the balls to enact a Second Amendment, don't you? This didn't happen much in Korea, I'm glad to say. When I said, "Miguk saram imnida" ("I'm an American"), people's eyes usually lit up...as long as they were under 40.

I'm not apologizing for anybody. I'm proud of the country I was born in. It's a swell place. There are a lot of intelligent, worldly, culturally-aware people here. But as usual, a tiny contingent of dimwits is mucking things up for the rest of us. Not every American tourist is ugly. And that's what I've set out to prove, no matter where I go. It's my unofficial mission, when I'm wandering the globe, to show people that Americans aren't evil, stupid, obtuse or ethnocentric. Whatever foreigners I meet are going to scratch their heads afterward and say, "Hmmm...that bloke wasn't all bad."

Well, except for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If I meet that guy on the street, I'm going to give him the wedgie of his life.

With this promise in mind, I set out to learn the Korean language almost immediately upon arriving there. No, before. I was familiarizing myself with the alphabet and basic grammar before I'd even left Wyoming. I was only a few months into my tenure at my hagwon (academy) on Geoje Island, but I was already starting to get comfortable in the lingo. I had the alphabet down, the number system was beginning to coalesce, and I even had some rudimentary sentences under my belt.

I was so proud of what I'd accomplished that I thought I'd trot out some of my skills before my students. Impress 'em, you know. Let them see that I was getting comfortable in their language, even as I was acclimatizing them to mine. Fair trade, you see. It would make 'em feel like I was making an effort, and that I wasn't some overbearing, self-centered xenophobe.

So I started calling out the page numbers of our textbook in Korean. You know, instead of "twenty" I'd say "i-ship." "O-ship-gu" for "59," etc. "Sam-baek-chil" in place of "307," and so on. Then I'd stand up there in front of the whiteboard and bask in the smiles, widened eyes, and delighted gasps of the little ebon-haired tykes.

Then it happened. The time came to turn to page eighteen.

There's a rather interesting quirk of the Korean language involving the number eighteen. It's spelled like this: 십팔. However, the pronunciation, ship-pal, is EXTRAORDINARILY similar to the Korean F-word, shi-pal (시팔). It's almost exactly the same, in fact. 십팔 is pronounced SHEEP-pal, but you don't aspirate the "p" at the end of "sheep." You can't hardly hear it. The Korean F-bomb is pronounced SHEE-pal, without any "p" at the end of "shee." Unless you're a lifelong Korean speaker, it's very, very difficult to hear—let alone pronounce—the difference between the two.

Just my rotten luck, huh?

Wondering why my entire class burst into peals of raucous laughter whenever I said "eighteen," I went to my Korean colleagues and asked them what the deal was.

Charles asked me, "How are you pronouncing it? Say it for us."

I did.

Eyes bulged. Jaws dropped. Hands clamped over mouths. A universal gasp of horror went up. Charles, who had perhaps been expecting it, was laughing. He put a friendly hand on my shoulder and said, bracingly, "You are saying the F-word."

A frayed little piece of paper went spinning through the whorls and eddies of my mind and burst into flames, disappearing forever. I suppose it was the last forlorn shred of my dignity, self-assurance, and pride. For the rest of the day, I slunk around campus with my head between my shoelaces, while Korean kids and teachers alike snickered into their sleeves.
It took me ages to live this down. Charles was a lot gentler than I deserved; he only ragged me once or twice a month for the remainder of my sojourn. The kids, however, wouldn't let it rest. Any time I paused in my lecture for more than two seconds, Arthur and Edwin would pipe up: "Teacher! Say eighteen! Eighteen!"

There were no consequences; no parents were called, no disciplinary action taken. No fire-breathing ajuma showed up at my apartment door, out for scalps. I don't even know if word got back to the school director. But me pulling the rug out from under my own attempt at cultural awareness was punishment enough. My worst nightmare had come true. Not only had I been guilty of the most grievous linguistic impropriety, but I'd also negated the pains I'd taken to disprove the theory of widespread American unworldliness. I'd done the exact opposite of my intention. My vaunted assiduousness had been thwarted by ignorance.

Oh well. It made for a good story.