Helplessness (but NOT Little Bo Peep)

In the US, a very few people got to see one particular side of me, which a beloved psych colleague liked to call  my "Little Bo Peep" act.  This involved my acting very helpless and in need of manly support for some trivial task - and it works like a charm, even when the targeted man KNOWS he's being played.  This might include smushing hairy spiders in my office; lifting heavy boxes or moving a file cabinet; even unloading a push mower from the back of my van. 

Now, that role is not entirely fake - there are situations when I am a moron and might actually need someone to help me, but I'm too dumb to know that fact.  Here are two examples from the last 24 hours. 

Yesterday I needed to remove some stains from three shirts.  I did not have the oxyclean spray I would have used in the US, and I've never been a very good housekeeper so set-in stains are generally allowed to live.  Plus, I have always feared bleach (my grandma once burned her hands badly with bleach; my mom ruined my favorite shirt in 7th grade by bleaching out its black stripes) so I haven't used it, but I now have Time on my hands and my new role of Housewife to practice.  Plus, we had a bottle of bleach from Nick's previous apartment.  See picture.

I started by using a Q-tip dipped in a capful of the bleach, but that wasn't working fast enough (I also need to practice patience), so I dumped the whole capful onto the shirt and rubbed it in.  The liquid felt surprisingly slippery as I rinsed the shirt, and only after rinsing out the third shirt did I notice the little graphic on the bottle's label.

Now, since 90% of the writing here is in Korean, my brain has learned to tune it out - you don't even assume you'll find any English, and my Korean reading is still so slow that a special ed teacher would lose patience with me.  So I hadn't bothered to look at the label.  But the small picture caught my eye: a sink drain.  Hm.  Weird.  Oh. Wait a minute. This isn't bleach after all.  It's... drain cleaner. Oh. Well, look on the bright side: it works like a charm on old stains.  I should post this on Pinterest or something.  Or not. 

Today, Sam and I were feeling restless and decided to go to a beach; I drove (a rare occurrence as both Sam and Nick prefer to drive). We took a route through the rice paddies, which have lovely cement roads that allow us to see the rice and the egrets up close. (Egrets are giant white birds - you've seen them standing on alligators and hippos in African safari shows. They like to hunt frogs in the rice and I adore them.)  

Anyway, the paddy roads are also narrow and are rather unpredictable in terms of where you end up. Unfortunately, we followed one that ended abruptly. Dead stop.  With no place to turn around and steep banks on either side, I had to back up for 1/4 mile to the nearest intersection. Which I did pretty darn well, though Sam kept gasping and asking (begging) if I wanted him to drive. (Men.)

Now, the narrow cross-road to which I successfully backed also had steep banks and a set of very short cement "railings" on the sides; this tiny bridge went over an aquaduct. This particular intersection also happened to have a Korean bicycle man who had stopped (dead stop) to stare at our progress.  He apparently could not bear to watch me negotiate the 23+ point turn that scraped and bumped over the cement and so BOTH men decided to give me directions - one in mortified English and the other in Korean hand gestures. Our windows and the sunroof were open, it had begun raining, we were all getting soaked, and I could not stop giggling like a fool.  

 

Sam preferred to drive on the way home. Imagine that.

P.S. A couple of months ago, Nick gave me a short G.K. Chesterton essay on running after one's hat; it was about seeing challenges as opportunities and adventures.  (Now that I think about it, perhaps Nick had a particular point in giving me that essay a couple of months ago.  Hmm.) Anyway, this is my favorite line: "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered."  And today... was an adventure.  : )