The workweek ended with a stand-off. I’ve had my fair share of duels since arriving on these shores, and I haven’t always come out on top.
There was the Monkey Beach incident where an humorless bouncer dislocated my finger, popped it back and sent me home with my tail between my legs. That was humbling.
There was the Monkey Beach incident where an humorless bouncer dislocated my finger, popped it back and sent me home with my tail between my legs. That was humbling.
Then there was the famous Soraksan Kai Bai Bo. A rock-scissors-paper contest between 13 climbers, which I lost miserably and had to leap into the frozen lake atop the mountain. Having to be rescued by a life-ring in my underpants was again, humbling.
And most recently the Hongdae spectacle, in which I (allegedly) pushed a local into some bushes and provoked a terrifying chase down the street which ended with a fly-kick. Who fly-kicks a guy, you might ask? Korean ninjas.
So zero for three.
On this occasion though, I was to come out on top. To be fair my adversary was a 12 year old girl. But I’m not one to discriminate. It was the last class of the weak, and of course the most harrowing. With 15 minutes left in the cage with these terrorists it’s always less about education and more about survival. They can smell freedom, and victory becomes about fending off blows from every angle. It’s hungry wolves to a deer. A tired deer. The tables begin to rock, paper airplanes emerge, and books are tossed about. And then, with my back turned, young Erin took her chance.
The eraser was what you’d expect to find in any stationary store. White, round, deadly when used as a projectile. What the little ankle-biter didn’t know was that this object strikes an uncanny resemblance to something that we saffa’s have become experts at snatching from the air. A cricket ball. With the missile locked onto its target, the back of my head, kids frozen with mouths agape, I sprung into action with ninja-like agility that I had learnt from my previous foe. Spinning around to grab the slug with a precision that Jonty would have been proud of, I shot them all my most chilling Rock eyebrow and watched the fear sink in.
This was what I had waited for. This was what the bouncer had felt as I whimpered off into the night. This was what my friends had felt as I scrambled to escape the freezing waters of a Korean winter and had to be fished out with a life buoy. This, I now knew, was what the ninja had felt as he took me down with the kick that years of practice had trained him for.
As a pack of wolves turned to into a class of shaky middle-school’ers and lumps began to form in petrified throats, I felt it too. What was it, this thing that connected me to the bouncer and even the ninja. Was it revenge? The planets aligning as the universe got its own back on the bad guy? I didn’t care. It was glorious. The 100 lines of punishment that occupied those kids’ Friday nights didn’t dampen my spirits either. It was a rare victory for the greatest underdog of them all - the English teacher. 1 from 4. 
