Is there a song/movie/food/etc. that strongly reminds you of someone whenever you experience it? Who does it remind you of?
There are several songs in my life playlist that I hold dear to my heart because of the memories attached to them. One of these is “Childlike” by John Park. A few years back, in 2015, I took my little brother on a month-long trip to South Korea. It was his first time in South Korea, and he was new to the language, culture, and the people. I had signed us up for an academy to learn singing and dancing, even though I knew I had no sense of rhythm and couldn’t hear the difference between two notes to save my life. It was an expensive way for me to set up a bonding trip for the two of us, since we had never gotten along as children. A six-year age gap and the gender difference had resulted in many years of me pushing him away and telling him to get lost. It took me years and many of his tears, to realize how wrong I had been as a child. During the time at the academy, we had 100 more fights and 1000 more hurt feelings, with me being the older one and still unable to be mature about things. My little brother is a smart kid. Too smart for his own good. He’s a one-of-a-kind person, and I’m so proud to be his sister.
I can say that now, years after all our many fights, because the moment I heard him, with his deep voice, sing “Childlike”, I cried so hard that I couldn’t see anything in front of me. It was the song that was assigned to him because it was also the only song that he could sort of hit with his insanely low vocal register. I keep the recording of his singing on my phone because it reminds me of how he had stepped out of his comfort zone of English and just playing video games, to join me on this horrendous month-long journey of learning how to be an amateur singer. I remember seeing him searching for the lyric translations, and then explaining to me the meaning of the song and being happy that he could differentiate some of the Korean words and read some Korean characters. It’s a song that reminds me of my bond with my family, and how lucky I am to have every one of them. Even if we still argue and try to virtually strangle each other at least once a month.
What was the scariest moment of your life thus far?
What a question to have! I don’t think I’ve had a “scariest moment” of my life yet. Waking up every day and looking into the mirror gives me enough fright as it is. I’ve somehow narrowly avoided many strange incidents, from being followed by a strange white van down streets to just going fast enough in my car and missing the sudden car accident debris flying my way. There’s a whole selection of wild stories I have, but thankfully, nothing bad has actually happened, so my brain doesn’t really register them as scary. I’m lucky to be able to say that, and I’m grateful for it, but I’m left with a huge blank on a scary moment in my life. I have things I’m scared of, like people, ghosts, cockroaches, monotone figures of authority, and other insignificant fears, but not a defined moment that made me go into fight-or-flight status and freak out. I don’t care enough to feel like I should be scared. I should take precautions and be aware of my surroundings, but to care enough to have had a scariest moment of my life is too much effort. All that effort can be used for things I like feeling, like absolute joy when I’m eating my favorite food – curry – or extreme relaxation and happiness when I sink into my bed at night to finally catch a few Z’s. If I had no choice but to name one single moment as the scariest, it would be when my little brother was born, and I thought my mother had given birth to a tiny hairy ape. I can recall the complete horror I felt before I realized that the little monkey in her arms was a small human. That’s the extent of my senseless ‘scary’ moments.
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