Dear reader, the other day I stopped by a Korean market--a massive, Ikea-like structure selling everything from tiny dried shrimp to cell phone paraphernalia, from fresh, gaping fish to frozen, digestive drinks.
I came in search of a rice cooker.
Why, then, did I suddenly find myself fingering the sweets? Am I really so predictable? When I say I'm on hiatus, does that mean I will only blog more often? When I say I need a rice cooker, does that translate to "you can find me in the candy section"?
Rice cookers, as it so happens, are now being offered in designs resembling adorable, compact robots, at prices which make you wonder if they'd also perform light housekeeping tasks and offer the occasional massage.
But what I was really thinking about, as I perused everything I wasn't there to buy, was one of my secretly desired superpowers: the ability to speak a foreign language better than any native speaker of that tongue.
You know? Because it drives me batty when I go to check out and the cashier switches to English without even giving me the benefit of the doubt. How does she know I can't whip out some rapid fire Korean? Why does she assume I can only say kimchi? And Gangnam style?
It's maddening!
Imagine if I let loose a streak of Korean, more legit and authentic than her Korean--imagine the look on her face!
I am constantly losing myself in this fantasy, by the way. Last week I walked past a group of French tourists and imagined them asking me for directions to a restaurant. For the next several minutes I pictured myself explaining where they could find good sushi, modestly excusing my grasp of their language as they stared at me, tears streaming down their cheeks, begging me to return home with them and become France's next poet laureate.
What is your superpower fantasy, dear reader? What amazing ability do you wish you possessed?
Oh, and it can't be the power to turn traffic lights from red to green because you're late picking up the carpool from spending too long perusing candy at a Korean market...curiously, that one is already taken.