After I had been in Korea for a couple of weeks, two majors and my former roommate asked me to go bar hopping with them one night in Taegu. I knew a lot of places to go in Seoul. But I was new to Camp Walker and Camp Henry. As a result, I had no idea where to go in Taegu. My roommate was even more of a greenhorn than I was. He had never even been in Korea before. However, one of the two majors was a seasoned veteran who was working on his third tour in Korea. This was his second tour in Taegu. He said he knew exactly where to go. Thus, we put our trust in him. He took us to this one bar that was in the basement of a building. He said it was a karaoke bar. The only experience I had with karaoke before this (but many times after) was that I had sung a few songs with some of my officer friends at Fort Lewis at the officers’ club. Mostly, my friends had sung the songs. I was just standing up on stage with them as moral support. The problem was that they were singing songs that were about three or four octaves above my vocal range. You know. Blues favorites and old Motown hits from groups like the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, and the Temptations. I might’ve been able to hit some of those notes when I was a kid. But who was I fooling? I couldn’t sing that shit now to save my ass. I wasn’t even going to pretend that I could. Oh, hell no. But I could lip-synch with the best of them. Milli Vanilli didn’t have shit on me. Not at all. But if I were to sing, and I mean honest to God sing with my own voice, the actual words to a song, I would have to carefully hand select the tune. That way I could ensure that the song matched my vocal range. Well, we walked into this karaoke bar and sat down and started drinking beer and eating peanuts. Pretty soon, we were drinking beer and Soju and eating peanuts and dried squid. The major that had led us into that bar got up and sang the song, Danny Boy. He was on his second trip up to the mic to sing that song when a couple of Korean guys walked into the bar. Pretty soon, those Korean guys had joined us over at our table. One of them walked up to the bar and ordered a round of drinks for the table. The other asked if they had a book of songs for the karaoke machine. Of course, they did. Unfortunately, half of the songs were in Korean, and of the half that were in English, not a single one was a song that I knew. Apparently, the Korean gentlemen didn’t seem to know any of the songs either. But they sure did enjoy listening to our friend’s rendition of Danny Boy. So, naturally we got to listen to that tune quite a few more times before the night was over. Meanwhile, back at the table, the rest of us were slamming down shots of Soju and eating peanuts and dried squid in between swallows of beer. The Koreans didn’t understand a word of English and we didn’t understand much Korean, so it made for interesting communication. Of all of the people sitting at the table, I knew the most Korean. So, I struck up a conversation with the Korean gentlemen. I didn’t understand half of what they were saying. But what the hell. I was drunk off of my ass and really didn’t give a shit. We just talked. I’m not really sure what we talked about. Come to think of it, I’m not really sure what I said to them. I don’t even remember having the conversation with them. I do know that by the time we got ready to leave that bar, we were all three sheets to the wind. None of us could walk a straight line to save our ass. No way no how. I’m not even sure how we found our way back to the BOQ (Bachelor Officers ‘Quarters) on Camp Walker. The next day at the Matériel Directorate for the 19th Support Command at Camp Henry, the major and my roommate came up to me and asked me, “Where in the hell did you learn how to speak Korean like that?” I didn’t have a clue what in the hell they were talking about, so I replied, “What in the hell are you talking about? When was I speaking Korean?” My roommate replied, “Last night at the bar. Don’t you remember?” “Remember what? I remember going to the bar. I even remember drinking Soju and beer. I even vaguely remember eating peanuts and dried squid. But talking Korean? Why in the hell would I be talking Korean?” “Well, after the two Korean guys joined us and started buying drinks for us, you started talking to them in Korean. Then, you pretty much talked to them all night long in Korean. The rest of us didn’t have a clue what in the hell you guys were talking about.” “Well, I’m guessing that if I was talking to those guys in Korean, I probably didn’t have a clue what in the hell I was talking about either. So, I’m pretty sure that the only people that knew what in the hell was being said were the Koreans.” “Well, you sure could’ve fooled us. In fact, you did fool us.” “In that case, I guess I fooled everybody.” It seemed that our little drunken karaoke beer bash had just been another exercise in futility.
by 
by 