"What do you think of the traffic in Korea?" I was asked
by a middle-aged woman in my first week teaching English.
"I try not to!" was the initial response that came to
mind but instead I asked her what made her wonder.
"Oh, most foreigners say that's the first thing they notice
about Korea," she answered nonchalantly.
She was on to something. I don't remember my first taxi
ride in Pusan. I've tried but I believe, like many victims
of trauma, I have repressed the memory. The first memory
I have is more a mosaic of the true memory embellished
with snippets from the famous car chases in classic Hollywood
movies. I only know this because at one point I can visualize
my taxi driver driving under the "L" in a late model American
car that could have only belonged to Gene Hackman in The
French Connection. I never said my memory was accurate.
Anyway, as I have a tendency to exaggerate and I was suffering
from posttraumatic stress syndrome you're going to have
to cut me some slack.
And so I didn't have to think long before telling her,
yes, the traffic was perhaps the most obviously different
thing I'd seen in my first week. After only a week, I
was still frightened riding in a taxi. While rounding
a corner and watching a wayward bus emigrate from it's
lane and begin to loom larger in my passenger window I'd
think of my premature death.
"Was she wearing clean underwear?" my mother would surely
ask through her tears.
"Well, ma'am, we're not certain if it was clean before
the accident or not. We get a lot of that in these parts,"
Of course, because my mother would insist on coming here
if I were to perish in an unfortunate but at the time,
seemingly probable bus-taxi-man on a scooter-traffic accident,
the conversation would be much different. No Barney Fifes'
here. I can picture my little, Hispanic mother giving
the twenty-something year old Korean cop a hard time (add
slight Spanish accent here), "What do you mean, che wasn't
wearing her seatbelt? Che always wears her seatbelt?"
"What would you rike to do with her lemains?"
"Why wasn't che wearing her seatbelt? Why did che have
'lemains' with her???"
But miraculously, I survived my first week of taxi rides.
Then, thanks to the kind hands of the gods, I made it
through my first month of taxis. And soon it was obvious
(to me, at least) that I had been put on this Earth for
a very special purpose in life, though that purpose had
not yet been revealed at the time of this writing. Fate
alone allowed me to survive one third of a year riding
in Korean taxis.
Had it not been for my sudden belief in God, I would have
come to the conclusion there must be some kind of system
here. If it were up to the odds alone I should have been
killed in my first month. Could there be a system? More
research still needs to be done. Another student described
the traffic as "organized chaos". Hmmmmmm, "organized
chaos", I like that.
Maybe it wasn't divine intervention. Maybe it wasn't pure
luck. Maybe the crazed taxi drivers, hurried moms, work-release
program bus drivers, testosterone driven teenage boys,
kamikaze scooter deliver guys and the rest of the normal
drivers knew what they were doing. They had a method.
There's little competition on the roads here and so that
makes for less hostility and the system works here. In
the United States, our motto is, "Mine, mine, mine" My
street, my lane, my space. It's different here. With the
exception of the Short Man Syndrome felt by some taxi
drivers in regards to all of the buses, there's no animosity
between the drivers whose cars push and shove their ways
around town.
Today I will step into a taxi and sit back, relaxed enough
to read a book and disregard the buses and scooters sharing
our lane. In fact, if truth be told, I've come to enjoy
most of my taxi rides throughout the city, the traffic
patterns remind me of, well, fish. A lot of fish. A giant,
gas guzzling, carbon monoxide omitting, school of fish.
I will watch in relaxed amazement as all three lanes of
traffic turn left at the same corner and somehow ALL of
us manage to merge into the one lane road without touching
each other.
Organized chaos? Maybe. Or "organized fish", I think.
"Will you drive in Pusan?" my student asked at the end
of our discussion.
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