Reality Check

You know you've been married too long when...

Since the day I first set foot on Korean soil, I get the occasional native Korean well-wisher who goes out of the way to approach me, and, unabashedly, tell me that I'm "handsome".  Quite often a "hello" and a "handsome" are jumbled up with Korean, conversational vocabulary. 

It's really very flattering, and occurs far too frequently to be dismissed as mere friendliness.  My beauty has been praised along the banks of the Cheonggyecheon, in aisles of department stores, and, most recently, at a tourist attraction on Jeju Island.  There, on a walkway leading to a viewing platform along the seacoast, a large group of young, Korean women passed by my wife and me.  As they glanced at us, and greeted us with pleasant expressions of  "hello", the word "handsome" was quietly, yet very distinctly, bantered about amongst them, mixed in with their predominant, Korean tongue.  There was no elderly vision blurred by cataracts in this group.  All were in the prime of life, and in possession of keen eyesight.

With an air of smug satisfaction and, perhaps, hinting to my wife not to take for granted her trophy husband of many, many years; as soon as the girls were out of earshot, I inquired of her, "Did you hear that?".

With a roll of her lovely eyes and an exasperated sigh, my wife replied earnestly, "Yes...maybe the word has a different meaning here".