Sometimes I'm the slave, sometimes ...

It's dawn and the foreigners are pushing each other around in shopping carts, frightened giggles and metallic rattling noises coming from the illlit alleyway between chicken places. Meanwhile, Korea sleeps: mommy curled up in bed with her 20 year-old son; daddy splayed out naked, lying unconscious on a medicine-white futon down at the neighborhood rub 'n tug. Soon, Korea will wake up, jettison the kids off to school for twelve hours. Mommy will strap on her sun visor, go out and price haggle with vegetable vendors, come home and cook kimchi stew, stare pensively out the window, watch KBS dramas all afternoon. Daddy will wear a silver suit for fourteen hours and he won't come home after that. The foreigner gets up at one PM, groans, watches videos on the internet until three, walks to school munching on a cornbread thing, thinks this is all a pretty raw deal, public restrooms ain't got toilet paper ...