Karen

 

(It turns out that not everyone is a racist.)

Yesterday, I woke up at 6 a.m. and drank a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Then I read the headlines on my smartphone while taking a nasty shit. A two-year-old girl from Seoul was murdered by her mother and stepfather. They basically starved the child to death over a period of months. The poor kid was reduced to eating puppy food from the dog bowl and was once severely beaten for picking through the trash in search of sustenance. Her younger brother was also malnourished. Luckily, he’s now under state care and is on the road to recovery. The scoundrels responsible for this crime were given a thirty-year prison sentence.

I ate hash browns for breakfast as I watched the news on YouTube. A pregnant New-York-City nurse named Sarah Comrie finished a twelve-hour shift and rented a bike to go home. Then a group of black teenagers began harassing her, claiming the bicycle belonged to them. They even filmed the entire event, and the video went viral. Immediately, the American mainstream media started calling Sarah a white supremacist and an unhinged Karen. Karen, for all of you who have been living under a rock, is a racist term denigrating white women. Anyway, it turns out that Mrs. Comrie was telling the truth and has the receipt to prove it. Sadly, this whole incident was nothing more than another race hoax. Imagine that.

I called my mother using Facebook Messenger.

She said, “How are you feeling?”

I said, “Not good. This cold is wearing me to the bone.”

“How long have you had it?”

“This is day seven.” I paused for dramatic effect. “Perhaps it’s Covid.”

“Do you have a fever?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Then it can’t be Covid.”

“That’s not necessarily true. Some of my students have caught the virus more than once. The symptoms aren’t as severe the second time around.”

Mom changed the subject. “The grass in my backyard is getting long.”

I said, “Tell Nurse Ken. He’ll cut it for you.”

“Getting that boy to do anything is like pulling teeth. I asked him to do it tomorrow, but he says I should wait until Monday.”

“Then wait until Monday. It’s no big deal. But the most important thing is to make him do it. You and your husband are too old. I’d never forgive myself if you keel over dead because of yard work.”

“Don’t worry. I’m in no condition to push a mower from hither to yon.”

I drove to work with Rice-Boy Larry sitting next to me in the passenger seat. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he yawned about a million times. He looked completely spent even though it was only 8 a.m. The kid never sleeps. Like many Asian boys, he’s always busy studying or playing computer games. It really grates on my nerves.

I said, “You know that Korean is your first language, don’t you?”

He said, “What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”

I sighed heavily. “You bitch and complain all the time about your Korean class. Yet Korean is your mother tongue.”

“Yes, but I feel much more comfortable with English.”

“Back when you were in first grade, you couldn’t even spell dog. It was embarrassing. Your teacher even yelled at me.”

He shrugged. “So?”

I shrugged, too. “I’m just bringing it to your attention. You’re a fluent Korean speaker whether you like it or not.”

He shot me the stink eye. “You need a psychiatrist. Nothing you say makes any sense at all.”

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