Don't Open the Box: Mama Mia, My Dear Korea!

Viva Korea!

When I was still a young Sazanami of about nine, I cherished two weekly events more than anything else: my video game time and my time with my English tutor. He was a ruddy Scottish man who taught you through the things you liked best. The things I liked best were stories, especially fantasy stories. He had a whole head full of myths to impart on me and would relate them to me in energetic story-telling sessions. Then he would write them down in a to-be-understood-by-9-year-old-Japanese-boy-if-he-studied-hard versions every week and then ask me the next week to explain it to him in English, hopefully having understood it more.

My lovely black mage badass, Medea!

I loved all the stories, but especially the Greek ones! At around the same time I was obsessed with playing Super Mario USA (2 for the rest of the world) with my friends, I was learning all about Jason and the Argonauts. I especially liked Medea, because she reminded me of a Japanese RPG female sorceress character, with all the ways she would cleverly help Jason. If you know the story, you know that it's also like an RPG in that there are several different endings, particularly about Medea. No matter how it ends though, Medea either has something horrible done to her or is coerced by fate to do terrible things. I didn't like how Jason betrayed her. I would always think, "Poor Medea!"

As my brothers and friends played through Super Mario USA, we'd say "Mama mia!" when we died. One time, I said, "Mama mia, poor Medea!" when I died as the princess, because you know, the princess was helping out like Medea did. It caught on.

One of my friends was a master at Super Mario USA. Her family had moved from Korea to work in Japan. She was my first Korean friend. We always left the hardest parts to her. It was in one of those levels where you have to be very careful how you bomb the rock walls to move on and in a dubious case of carelessness, she accidentally died. Cue, "Mama mia, poor Medea!" I thought I would be clever and add "From Korea" to the rhyme.

From that point on, the rhyme got longer and longer as we added more silly things to it. Anything we could think of that rhymed with "mia" got in. The chain got very long, but it always started with, "Mama mia!" and ended with, "Poor Medea!" At one point we added "Pizzeria" and of course if you eat something, what's the funniest food-related thing in the world to a nine-year-old? If you guessed poop, congratulations, you either understand children, are one yourself or are a child at heart -- all good things if you ask me! So the pizzeria chain evolved into "Pizzeria, poopa-pee-a, diarrhea!"

Now keep in mind we were just playing around, so we didn't really pay any particular attention to the order we were rhyming in. Here's what the finished monster looked like:

Mama mia
Two and three-a 
It's a me-a
No, it's a she-a
Drives a Kia
From Korea
Pizzeria
Poopa pee-a
Diarrhea
Ants and bee-a
Gonna sting-ya
Poor Medea!

Harmless and fun, right? Well, not entirely. Unfortunately, our little rhyme was so catchy to us, we'd often sing it when not playing the game. My Korean friend sang it at home in front of her parents. I'm not sure how fluent they were in English, but all that stuck out to them was "Korea" and "poop."

We got in trouble. While my parents were understanding and tried to reason with her parents, I'm afraid I was never allowed to play with my Korean friend again. It was obvious to me and my brothers that we weren't trying to be mean to Koreans. My dad and mom simply warned me that no matter how innocent the intentions are, one should never put country names anywhere close to defecating terms. I did take the advice, of course and I've been lucky to make many other good Korean friends since then, but I can't help but think this when I look back on it:

Mama mia! Poor Medea!