And He Shakes His Little Tush on the Catwalk

I have to confess. The Burger King incident wasn't the end of the story. But I was trying to show you all how similar my life is here and the more I wrote, well, the more it became clear that it is not. The reality is my life only appears on the surface to the be same. It's like living in a parallel universe. Things really are a bit whack around here.

A few days after the Burger King incident, I was shopping in the PX with Roman while Reilly Kate was at school. We were wandering the aisles like any toddler and fat mama would be: munching on chocolate covered Oreos, leaving a trail of crumbs and smears in our wake. I stopped to look at hemorrhoid creams (hey, I heard they reduce the appearance of wrinkles under the eyes!) and who comes charging up to me? Sue. Ajuma the Second.

"Hello," she said, card in hand. "I am international modeling agent."

"Yes, I know," I mumbled through a mouthful of chocolate ecstasy. "We met at Burger King the other day. You called to have my daughter, Reilly Kate, do some work but she had school that day."

"Oh, yes," she almost whimpered. "Her school." I thought about offering her a cookie to lighten her mood, but seeing as she was about a size O in a pair of very low cut, trendy jeans, I thought better of it. In fact, suddenly I became very self conscious about the cookie crumbs that had collected on the shelf my enormous mammaries create. I brushed vigorously at my boobs, dumping the pile of Oreo crumbs on the clean, white tile floor.

"I didn't know you had another daughter. How many babies do you have?" she asked, her eyes never really leaving Roman who danced around with his cookies, one in each chocolatey hand, and growled at her.

"Just two. One girl. And one boy," I motioned toward the growling beast.

"Him? Oh, him. Him's so... so... pretty boy," she bent down to his level as she spoke. "You pretty boy," she said and proceeded to say something about how pretty he was to him in Korean. Koreans always speak Korean to children, regardless of whether they understand or not. I've noticed I speak English to Korean children, too, so I guess it is universal. It's kind of logical, too. Children really don't listen or even care what adults are saying. It's all just mumbo jumbo to disregard unless key words like "ice cream," "McDonalds," "Disney," or "Toys R Us" pop up on their radar. So, hey, Korean, English, it don't make a bit of difference. And Sue didn't say any of the key words. She just yammered away at how pretty Roman was.

She quickly reached into her bag to retrieve her camera and started snapping away. As she talked and cooed to him, Roman shoved both hands into his mouth to deposit the remainder of his Oreos. Sue was trying to get him to pose for the pictures, but he would have none of it. He then did what any self respecting boy of two with dangerous, chocolate covered hands would do. He puts them up like claws, growled again, and came at her, I'm sure with intent to share his chocolate with her pretty blouse. She jumped back and returned to the safety of her conversation with me.

"Gorgeous. All your baby gorgeous. Wow. So pretty," she said, with just a sniff of surprise. I think it was the little sniff that set me off. Maybe that combined with feeling old, fat, and frumpy in a big bulky sweater with cookie crumbs all over me while talking to an hipper, thinner, more glamorous "international modeling agent."

"Yes. Of course they are. Look at their mama," I said.

There are times, many times in the course of my life, that I do inexplicable things at bizarre moments. Things I don't intend to do. Things that don't even make sense at the time. Things done on a level of idiocy few have ever visited. This, my friends, would be one of those things. As I type this, my head is still shaking at my dorkdom. I stood there in my frumpy mom sweater, wearing baggy mom jeans, in the middle of the hemorrhoid section of the PX, and... I started... to... vogue. No kidding. Stop laughing. It's true. I was hamming it up for Sue's camera like she was paparazza and I was Tara Reid. Thank God I stopped before I let one of my saggy tits drop out of my shirt.

"I take Mama picture, too!" she snickered. "Yes, yes. Mama very pretty, too," she laughed. She did, too. She took pictures. Out of pity, I'm sure. The whole thing was rather ridiculous and that dawned on me a millisecond after she started actually taking the pictures.

I sobered up and stood still and said, "I can't model. My nose is crooked." As if that was the clincher there. With that, I gathered up my still growling cookie monster and moseyed on down the aisle. Just as I turned to go up the candy aisle (because I was in dire need of some sugar salve to soothe my raging dork infection), I looked back at Sue who was smiling broadly.

"I call you! I call you, gorgeous Mama!" she yelled after me.

I smiled weakly and haven't heard from her since.

But that isn't the end of my Korean modeling adventure. No, no my dear readers. That, it seems, is merely the beginning. It promises to get even more bizarre.

This past Tuesday the kids and I were having lunch at the little Mexican restaurant on base. They have a lunch buffet and you know the passion I have for lunch buffets is only matched by my love for tweezers, underwire, and stain stick. As I forked deeply into an enormous plate of taco salad, yet another Ajuma approached me. This one was even prettier, more fashionable, thinner, and had even better hair than Sue. Plus, she was wealthier. I know. I saw her rock from across the room -- 2.5+ carats in a yellow gold high cathedral setting, not that I was looking that hard or anything.

"Hi. My name is Gina. I'm an..."

I interrupted her before she had the chance to finish. "...an international modeling agent." She nodded and handed me her card.

"Did I meet you before?" she asked looking back and forth between Roman, who was jumping up and down on his chair like an angry monkey, and me.

I looked down at her card and realized that while I hadn't met her before, I did know who she was. A friend of mine had recommended that I call her if I was really interested in getting the kids modeling. I told him about the Burger King incident shortly after it had happened because his daughter does a lot of modeling. He gave me her card and told me that she was the most honest agent he'd come across.

"No. No we haven't met," I told her, "but I think we have a mutual acquaintance." I shouldn't have used such big words as "mutual" and "acquaintance." It threw her completely off her game. She stared at me blankly, cocking her head to once side and making a slurping noise that Koreans often do when confused or unsure of what to say.

"Ron B***," (name abbreviated to protect the innocent) I said.

"Ron B***?" she asked, followed by another slurping sound.

"Yes. Ron B*** is a friend of mine. He said he knows you quite well and told me I should call you if I was interested in getting my kids to model," I explained.

"Ron B***?" again she cocked her head as if the name were in her head somewhere and if she just tilted it enough, the name would fall right into place on her tongue.

"Yes, Ron B***." I enunciated as clearly as I could, but really, the name is not that hard. It is a one syllable first name and a one syllable last name with sounds all easily made by native Korean speakers.

"Ron B***," she looked up at the heavens while saying the name to herself. "Ron B***... Ron..." and then it hit her. I think I actually saw a light come down from the ceiling and strike her square in the forehead. "Oh, Ron B***! Yes, yes! Ron B***! Yes, I know Ron B***." The stress she put on the name indicated that for whatever reason she just couldn't understand what I was saying. Perhaps the reason was the mouthful of refried beans I had wedged in with my tongue and teeth. That may just have afflicted my ability to speak clearly. But hells bells. I was eating, right? Can't waste time on silly talk while there's a buffet to be had!

She goes on to explain that she has a big client doing some big time catalog and they are shooting the pictures down in Cheju Do.
Would I be interested in Roman modeling for the catalog. Sure, I can bring along Reilly Kate. Yes, the company will pay for all of our airfare and hotel. Yes, he would get paid.

"Are you interesting in that one?" she asked.

I am not a good decision maker. I always seem to make the wrong choice. I can't do off the cuff serious talk. I can do improv. I can do funny. I can make people piss themselves in a split second. My brain moves like lightening in that capacity. But when asked to make some serious decision in an instant, I lock up like an engine low on oil in a dust storm. When she asked me if I was "interesting" in Roman doing this gig, my brain was not with her. Instead I was thinking, "It is 'interested!' 'Interested.' E-D. You can't do 'ing.' Did she say, 'Cheju?' They'd fly us to 'Cheju?' 'Interesting' is a different word with a different meaning. InterestED. Cheju, huh. Never been to Cheju. Could be fun. Could be interestING! See? There's an example of the proper use of the word. E-D, babe. E-D!"

What came out of my mouth, though was, "Sure! We're interesting!"

I gave her my number and our names and all that and she said she'd call me later. As she turned to leave, she reached out and tossled Monkey Boy's hair.

"So cute. Pretty blue eyes like Mama," she said.

Roman responded with a screech so loud it would have made a Howler Monkey blush. Really.

After she had left (and not left the restaurant, mind you, just left to go sit down at her own table not five feet from ours), I got so stressed about the whole ordeal that I ate three more plates of lukewarm, mediocre, Mexican lunch buffet. Have you read recently that my pants don't fit?

A few hours later, I got a phone call from Gina's assistant, Janice. She wanted to know at what time tomorrow could I meet them at Starbucks.

"The photographer is looking at four other babies to decide which is best for pictures," she explained. "Can you be there at 3 o'clock?"

"No, Roman gets out of school at 3 o'clock. It'll have to be a little later than that. It takes me about ten minutes to drive from..."

"Great. See you at 3:10!" and she hung up.

I stared at the phone and thought, "Misery loves company and there is safety in numbers."

Immediately my downstairs neighbor Jen sprang to mind. She's got three absolutely to die for gorgeous girls (the two year old with ringlets of gold you'd think were spun on a loom in heaven!). Plus, she's bubbly and friendly with a positive outlook. A great antidote to my caustic, pessimistic, abrasive self. I sent off an email asking her to meet me at Starbucks.

The next afternoon, as I pulled into the Starbucks parking lot, my phone rang. It was Janice.

"It is 3:10! Where are you? You said you can meet me at 3:10!" She sounded exceedingly panicked so I looked at my clock. It was exactly, EXACTLY 3:10.

"I'm pulling into the parking lot right now. I'll be inside in a minute." And before I could put the van in park, she was sprinting up to help me quickly unload the kids.

"We can go into Quiznos? It's okay for you?" she asked.

"Um, yeah sure."

We walked into the tiny little eating area. At one table were some high school kids playing huggy poo kissy face and whatever else kids these days do. At the other three were sprawled out some boutique type kids clothes, Gina, and a photographer with a really big lens. Janice handed me a powder blue jumper and instructed me to put it on Roman.

Would you know it, the kid adored the costume! He put that baby on, stuck his chest out, pounded upon the logo and garbled through his pacifier, "See? See me?" This is the same kid that hides whenever a camera is near. The same kid that growled at Sue and tried to smear chocolate on her hands as she took his picture. This kid was now acting like a professional model. Wouldn't you know it?

The Koreans went crazy! The teenagers rolled their eyes. And I swept over to the Starbucks next door to get Jen. I really thought they'd go ga ga for her two year old since she's about the same size as Roman. But as soon as Jen and I walked in, they swooped up her baby (a sweet faced cherub with eyes the color of washed denim) and planted a powder pink dress on her.

We're all crowded in this tiny little sub shop with a fashion photographer snapping up pictures of our kids. Roman walking the catwalk up and down the itty bitty aisle between the tables and the baby sitting atop a table. In addition to the photographer, Gina and Janice were walking around with digitals snapping pictures of all the kids. They even took pictures of a very sick Reilly Kate who was sitting in the stroller (let me tell you just how sick this little girl was -- she didn't talk! Not a word). I'm telling you, it was one of the strangest things. Had I been a customer in the place I wouldn't have been able to keep my composure. It was that funny.

After the show was over and the children were back in their street clothes, Gina told me that there were four other children being considered. If they did choose Roman, she would call me. I really breathed a sigh of relief, figuring that they probably saw through his little act. Besides, they don't want a kid who models with a pacifer cemented in his teeth.

Gina called me the next day. They're flying me, Roman, and Reilly Kate down to Cheju Island for a Thursday and Friday shoot. We leave tomorrow. Early. And we go it alone. Jen's baby didn't have enough hair for the Koreans (which is kind of funny since they routinely shave their babies' heads bald). I really cannot adequately express how much I am dreading this trip. It wouldn't have been bad if there was safety in numbers or misery loving company. But it is just the three of us. Mike cannot even go as he has to work (damn that work shit).

Wish me luck. I assume when we get down there Roman will have a meltdown, refuse to perform, throw down in a fit and knock one of those expensive lighting lamps down which will hit the photographer squarely on the head causing him to drop his fancy schmancy camera which Gina will dive for in an attempt to save but will fail and instead will land on her ring finger, breaking both her finger and that enormous rock she sports. If all goes as planned, we will end up owing these people thousands.

Should be a fucking blast.