Down The Rabbit Hole

My name is not Alice, though, as my story unfolds, you will see that it would be well suited to me. I wish I could tell you where my tale begins but I myself am unsure. Did it start with the birth of my youngest daughter almost 20 years ago? Did it begin when she discovered manga in middle school? Or did it start when she discovered boy bands a short while later? Did it begin the day she introduced me to Running Man? Or did it start the day she scribbled on roughly fifty post-it notes, folded them, placed them in a plastic cup, and held it out to me to choose just one? It’s hard to tell since, without any one of those events, none of what I am about to tell you would have taken place and I wouldn’t be where I am today. Perhaps you would be so kind as to help me decide.

My Lizzy Girl was my third child (or fourth depending on whether or not you count Brian – but that’s another story altogether) and my second (and youngest) daughter. She was, to say the least, a unique child. By this I do not mean that she was any type of prodigy. But she was, shall we say, different.

To start with, she was nothing like her older sister in temperament. She was what is commonly called a ‘drama queen.’ Every little thing was a major production. As a result, she was also highly creative. Fantasy and reality blended to the point where it was often hard to distinguish between the two. Perhaps because of her penchant for melodrama, as she grew, her interests were also out of the norm for the ‘typical’ American adolescent of her generation.

It started with Japanese manga. In particular one entitled, Hana Yori Dango (Boys Over Flowers), a modern day rags-to-riches romance of a high school freshman. As a mother concerned about her child’s reading material, I thought to myself, ‘Okay, not so out of the ordinary for someone her age with the exception of the fact that it’s in another language and takes place in another country.’ and I let it pass. Was that my mistake?

With the help of the internet and social media she began to learn Japanese. In a very short time frame, her love of manga expanded to include JPop and JDrama – Japanese pop music and Japanese television miniseries adapted from the mangas that she read. Posters of anime characters, teen idols, and boy bands began to decorate her bedroom wall. I told myself the same thing that I did above. Should I have stopped her then? Would that have changed my own fate?

Her teen years brought interest in other Asian languages, music, dramas, and cultures. In her freshman year of high school we even hosted a foreign exchange student from China. In her sophomore year, she became almost exclusively focused on South Korea mainly due to a KPop boy band, TVXQ/DBSK, and one of their singers, Hero Jaejoong, with whom she was completely obsessed. At the age of 15, she was proficient enough in Korean to join a streaming site squad providing English subtitles for newly aired episodes of KDramas. If I had known then what I know now would I have put my foot down?

Throughout her journey she kept trying to convince me to listen and watch and come along. For reasons that for the life of me I couldn’t tell you now, I refrained. Was someone upstairs looking out for me?

It was erosion that was finally my undoing. Years of cajoling had gradually worn away my strongly built wall of resistance. One night she told me about a Korean variety show called Running Man and asked me to watch just one episode. I eyed her dubiously. She promised she would never ask me again if I only watched one. ‘What could it hurt?’ I asked myself. It was only an hour and a half out of my life, it would make my daughter happy, and I would never have to listen to her nag me again. The parental-filial partition crumbled. She had even pinkie swore. I was soon to be free. I wonder now where my guardian angel had gone that day. Did Lizzy chase it away or did I just choose to ignore it?

She asked if there was a particular episode that I wanted to see. I told her to pick one of her favorites. In retrospect, I don’t think that I had ever laughed so hard in my life. At times, I laughed so hard that I cried. I gasped for air on multiple occasions. I held my sides because they hurt so much from laughing. She stopped it several times to ask me if I was okay. When it was over, she didn’t ask me whether or not I liked it. Instead she looked at me and asked me if I had time for another one. The warning bells should have gone off in my head. The red lights should have flashed. They didn’t. I didn’t even look at the clock. “Sure!”

We watched one more before taking a break for dinner and then marathoned several more episodes afterwards. Since I am a science teacher by profession and since it was summertime I didn’t have to worry about a particular bedtime or work in the morning. We watched selected episodes all the following day, only breaking to eat. And then we repeated the pattern once more the next day. The day after that, I started watching them sequentially starting with Episode 1. I started it first thing in the morning with my cup of coffee before she was even awake. When she finally rolled out of bed, we Googled the net to find recommendations of favorites by other fans and watched those together.

Looking back I can tell you without a doubt that Running Man is a slippery slope. First, the endorphins released from laughter are addictive. I wanted more. I needed more. It wasn’t optional anymore. It was required. Second, like a gateway drug, it led to other habits.

It wasn’t long after the first episode that I found myself visiting YouTube and listening to the music of the guest(s) which had appeared on the latest shows that I had watched. I found myself developing my own boy band biases. Next I was doing internet research on the filming sites that captured my attention. A number of these had historical and cultural significance and, as I delved further, I began to learn more about both those subjects.

After a couple weeks of this schedule, as we settled down in front of the big screen with the popular Korean snacks of Pepero and Choco Heim, she asked me if I had picked up any of the language yet. I thought about it briefly and realized that I had picked up quite a few words and began to rattle them off starting with ‘ne’ to answer her question with a ‘yes.’ Then she asked me if I had a favorite cast member. I told her that I did and that it was Kim Jong Kook. She got upset and said that I couldn’t have him because he was her bae. I made the following wallpaper and set it as my laptop background. She caved and relinquished her claim.

While music guests are very popular on Running Man, they also invite actors and actresses to participate on the show to promote their latest productions. Sometimes they will show brief clips of the movies or KDramas for which they are famous. Always there is banter between the guests and the regular cast members. It didn’t take long before I realized that there were inside jokes that I wasn’t getting. That was when I made my next mistake. The junkie went back to the dealer.

I asked Lizzy if she had seen Secret Garden, a KDrama starring Hyun Bin who had appeared in an episode of Running Man that I had recently watched. Silly question. Of course she had. She had loved it. But she wasn’t sure that should be my first KDrama to watch. She grabbed a post-it pad and pen off my desk and began scribbling frantically, mumbling to herself the whole time. As she finished writing on each slip, she hastily folded them into quarters, and dropped them into a plastic cup caught at a Mardi Gras parade. By the time she finished, there were about fifty pieces of paper. She covered the cup and shook it vigorously. Then she mixed it one more time with her hand for good measure and held it out to me telling me to pick one. I closed my eyes, reached inside, and pulled one out. I unfolded it, read it silently to myself, and laughed out loud. Smugly, I turned it around to show her. In her own handwriting were the words Secret Garden. Obviously it was meant to be. She offered to watch it again with me. Each episode ended on a cliffhanger and the credits of one episode did not even finish rolling before I was clicking the ‘play next’ arrow. The rest, as they say, is history.

During the two months of summer vacation, I had watched all the back episodes of Running Man, tucked a few KDramas under my belt, followed all the Kpop group comebacks, and did more research on history and culture. The summer ended much too soon.

August and September were hectic getting back into the work routine. My newly found passions took a back seat to lesson plans and grading papers. But my daughter and I had a standing date for Monday night when the newly subbed episode of Running Man would air on Drama Fever. I learned to ask which numbered episode in my current KDrama was the ‘point of no return’ and parceled them out to time the last few for the weekends. Some she re-watched with me; others I watched solo.

Then October and fall break rolled around and we huddled together once more prepared for another binge. Between episodes we were fixing dinner and talking about all the predictable elements of a typical KDrama. For example, Rule #1: The second male lead never gets the girl. We took turns going back and forth. We called these ‘The Laws of the KDrama Universe.’ We joked about writing one of our own. It was an enjoyable way to pass the time until we finished cooking and headed back to the TV for our fix.

That night I had a dream. It was in Korean with English subtitles. Go ahead. Laugh. I did. So did Lizzy when I told her about it. But that dream was the KDrama that she and I had joked about writing earlier that evening and what eventually became KDrama Queen. Watching was now replaced with writing.

By Thanksgiving I was two-thirds through the book and heavily into research gathering material on customs and locations. I was making my way around Seoul on Google Earth when my next brilliant idea hit me – we should actually go to South Korea. I yelled to the back of the house for Lizzy to come see me. I told her my plan. We verified that the spring breaks of my school and her university coincided. One hour and 100,000 frequent flyer miles later we had our reservations and I went back to writing. The first draft of the book was finished on New Year’s Eve. There was more than one thing to toast and celebrate at the stroke of midnight.

In April we boarded the plane for Incheon and spent an amazing week in a country that I never imagined would be on my bucket list. Blogs detailing our experiences will go up shortly. Towards the end of our trip we realized that we weren’t even going to scratch the surface of the places we wanted to go or the things we wanted to do. Before we even returned stateside, we began planning our return trip for the summer of 2016.

Lizzy and I recently bought our concert tickets for the Big Bang MADE Tour and will go to see them perform live on October 11th in Newark, NJ. I have also signed up to begin taking Korean language lessons in the fall. The pieces of paper in the cup have dwindled considerably. What a difference a year makes.

So, dear reader, now that you’ve heard my tale, you tell me. Exactly when does my story begin? Can you tell? Or are you as perplexed as I am? There’s only one thing I can say for certain. I may not be able to tell you exactly when my story starts but I suppose the actual date isn’t important. The important part of the story is that I fell down the rabbit hole and drank from the cup in the first place. So you just might as well call me Alice. Because, as you can see, once I drank from the cup, my life has never quite been the same and I’ve been wandering around in KWonderland ever since because I’ve yet to find the way out. Then again, in all honesty, I haven’t really been looking for it.