Stricken

My freshmen were wonderful yesterday. Snoopy and Matthew sat together talking about last night’s game, the first time I saw Snoopy (a sophomore) engaged with one of his younger classmates. Sophia and Gina came up at the end of class to check they had a grammar point right. The rest worked hard on a Friday afternoon, a feat perhaps unprecedented by a freshman conversation class.

This is Sunny. The only female cab driver I've ever
heard of - and she's in MY conversation class. After
her kimchi gift, I'm working up the courage to ask for a
taxi ride in a woman's cab before I leave.

Sunny, though, I thought, was surely going to steal the show for the day. She made me kimchi and rice and bought me an entire bag of applies. “Three minutes” she said, especially insistent. “Rice. Three minutes. Korean rice is so delicious.” As that’s a good tenth of her vocabulary, I was not only pleased but honored to eat her kimchi and rice last night for dinner.

But Kaká topped them all. He waited patiently until everyone else was finished before approaching with a painstakingly written note, which he read to me, pointing to the words he spoke one by one.

“Last class, I helped teacher with the radio. I’m sorry. I think it was a mistake.” He looked up at me, checking if I understood.

Radio? I thought. Who uses a radio? Which teacher? Did it make him late last time? I don’t have anything marked on attendance . . .

He said “radio” again, even more insistent than Sunny, and pointed to the spot where, two weeks earlier (our last class in this particular room), he had tugged the class boom box (radio) out of my hands, even after I’d told him not to.

“Oh. Yes. The radio.” I nodded, remembering the frustration of the moment.

He nodded. And then he pointed to the last word on the page.

“Stricken.”

Then he pointed to his heart.

I can’t put a name to whatever welled up in me as I realized what his apology meant: gratitude, I suppose; surprise certainly; pride for him; and deeply, peace that my anxieties had been understood by both God and by Kaká.

Patrasche. Named after Patrasche, dog of Flanders.
I don't understand either, but it's memorable.

You see, Asia has damaged my ability to relate to men. There was BoomTiger, memorably, and an over-sized sophomore named “Panda” or something who pressed me for a date. YoungBoom, another soccer boy, wanted me to ride to church with him every Sunday and listen to his favorite songs on his phone, sharing ear-buds after a 45-minute acquaintance. Sometimes students will call me pretty or cute, or say “I love you” but it’s an awkward cultural mistranslation, an eagerness to please, inappropriately phrased, stuck somewhere between meaningless and offensive.

Drunk ahjusshis will ask me if I’m Russian (often considered synonymous with “prostitute” among the local Busanites). Middle school boys giggle when I walk by, practicing their just-learned “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” and “I love you.” No, you say it to her! No, you! Say it! Ha ha.

Patrasche, dog of Flanders. Still don't get it.

I refuse to confine myself to the Korean expectations for women when relating to the opposite sex—relegated, it seems, to either cutesy, sexy, or frumpy—but I find myself unable to retain American expectations, either. Misunderstandings like Kaká’s happen all the time. It’s rude in America and in America, I would let a boy know he was being domineering, particularly if he were my student or friend. But I can’t do that here because Kaká was being helpful and sweet—according to Korean standards for men. Moreover, as my senior, he was honoring our relationship as older brother to younger sister. Nothing sexist or domineering about it: seniors have a duty to their little siblings.

I both “get” that and reject it.

I’ve lost my point of reference. It’s not culture shock—nothing shocking about it, after a 18-month dearth of equality-based relationships with men. It is culture disorientation and it’s tough. It’s tough to be twenty-four and forced to consider yourself asexual for the time being, somewhere between Korean and American, unable to hold standards and unwilling to let go of them.

And then, for a bright shining moment on a beautiful, boring Friday, there was Kaká, apologizing. For one moment, my point of reference came back, a gift from a boy I’d previously considered bull-headed. A boy who had wrested a stupid little yellow boom box out of my hands to help me.

I am still amazed that he read the tension of my reaction; I thought I had hid it, at least from him[1]. He overcame the cultural gap—the gap between our ages and relative positions of authority, overcame gender differences—to understand not perhaps everything that was wrong, but that there was something worth apologizing for. He was “stricken” for a harmless—beneficent, even—mistake he’d made.

My freshmen are marvelous.

Chuck gave this year's best answer to two of my hardest interview questions: "How can I pray for you?" and "What is the best job you can ever have?"
"To be a good father."
My freshmen are rockin'.

Foreground: Kelly (left) and Alice (right). Both are smart but very soft-spoken.

Friday's haul: home-made kimchi, rice, apples, lemon/limey crackers, Angel-in-Us mocha, and an entire box of honey tea. Like Asian Christmas!

P.S. I now know what causes the highlighting. And I can't fix it.

---

[1] My students are much more attentive to my attitudes, I realize, than my words.

SoccerDaze

I’m not positive, but this might be one of the longest amounts of time I’ve neglected my blog ever since its infancy. Good thing it’s not a baby, amirite?

But seriously, apologies. Want to know why I didn’t blog for a week and a half even though I traditionally, neurotically bordering on pathologically post at least on a weekly basis if only to have an outlet for the adverbial adverbage swilling in my head? Me too. Got no idea, especially considering how impossibly awesome my students are this semester.

Bowen: smiling

For reals.

I’m not a gushing person by nature, but they're fantastic. And this is why:

Last Wednesday I first got wind that this Thursday would be another English department soccer game. I vaguely looked forward to it, but in the back of my mind was the isolation that comes with being the only American. The only girl. I remembered the first time I tried to play at Kosin and was sent away since no one had told me it was a student-only game. The weekend went by.

This Tuesday afternoon, I was walking up to my office when I met Bowen, coming down the stairs. Bowen is a third-year and built like a brick wall, expressionless even when he smiles. Even when he's talking, I don't think he actually moves his mouth.

“Five o’clock,” he said ominously, holding up a spreadeagled hand. “Five o’clock Thursday.”

Daniel

Yesterday, I was rushing off to class, perpetually late to morning freshmen English, when third-year Daniel skittered by. Daniel’s a shorter guy, an excellent student with a dorky laugh. He often skitters, but he can also skitter around a full complement of defenders, all a good foot taller than him and land a shot from the corner of the eighteen. “Oh!” He starts a lot of sentences with ‘oh!’ “Oh, Thursday! Five o’clock! Bye!”

Today, the much-anticipated Thursday, I finished off 9 am freshmen English and stayed at my podium as my students swarmed forward, rather than out of the doors. Chloe--tall, bright, perpetually late to class--checked her attendance record. Grace, with big dreams to become a cartoonist, always gives me a personal goodbye. El--my elfin student who loves fairy tales, once brought me pictures with which to decorate my office, and picked and personally brought me the most perfect pink lotus flower I’ve ever seen in my life--stopped by to tell me that when her boyfriend visits from Seoul she wants me to meet him.

Matthew--skinny as a beanpole with one of those smiles that proves “exuberance is beauty”--and Kaka--an older student, fresh home after his military duties, hard-working and aggressive--hovered nearby.

Skinny Matthew.  Not his real smile.

I raised two eyebrows at them, half-smiling. They’re both soccer-mad and the last time the three of us played together we connected on a few nice passing plays. I knew what they were about.

Kaka, the “hyung” or “older brother” in this situation, looked to skinny Matthew, who speaks pretty good English for a freshman.

“Um, at five o’clock, we are playing soccer. Together-?”

“Yep, I’m coming!”

Kaka

Truth was, I was waffling about it--it’s been a stressful week, I needed to relax--until that moment. Matthew grinned and Kaka broke out into his “Okay!” that sort of means, “Great/I agree/Good idea” all at once. Heartfelt, impromptu, double high-fives are my favorite.

The day passed in a high-stress, high-energy blur. By five o’clock I’d had a nice, throbbing headache for the past three hours and knots in my neck. My voice was disappearing from trying to control a 46-person conversation class.

But it was Thursday. Five o’clock. And  Brick-wall Bowen, Skittering Daniel, Skinny Matthew, Okay! Kaka, and all the rest of the soccer mad English boys were there: Hoon, Gerrard, Torres, Snoopy, Matthew2, Kevin, Steve, Jacob, Mike.

We didn’t win the game. I didn’t play well. But I think I’m starting to understand the power of Korean group mentality, the power of inclusiveness even on an avowed introvert. And it's great.

**For the record, these pictures were taken somewhat under duress (ala most things I do to my students here). During our English department retreat, I passed my camera around the circle and told them they had to take a self portrait. They hated it because they couldn't look at themselves as they took the picture like you can with a smart phone. Consequently the picture quality suffered because the kids were super awkward with my digital. Also, I promised the kids I wouldn't post the pictures on my blog. Sorry, Hannah. I lied.

Professional Chukku

I’m not sure if it’s Korea or living abroad in general, or me in general, but I’ve recently been getting exactly what I didn’t expect. In America, if I want to go to the grocery store, it pans out pretty  much like I imagine: I get in my car, I drive for ten minutes, I buy too many cookies and not enough fruit, get back in my car, and go home. If I need to pay my bills, I pay them. If I want to play soccer, I go to any old field and shoot around for an hour.

I’ve tried to pay my bills twice today—the first time I’ve tried since November—and failed (no one was there and might not be there tomorrow; who knows?). The last time I played soccer by myself I got roped into coaching three fourteen-year-old boys for an hour in exchange for a convenience-store coffee. Today I had to hop three buses to find my local grocery because the normal bus drove by, lights off.

Busan Asiad Stadium, home of the I'Park!

Yesterday I tried to go to a Korean soccer game. My friend Candice messaged me with news of free tickets and I jumped on it, dragging my friend Kim along as well. We showed up a little late and had to sit on the endline, but we were close to the players on the field and even closer to a crowd of rabid teenage girls screaming and singing their support of our team, Busan I’Park. Like most girls in Korea, they didn’t seem to have much understanding or interest in the game itself, but the sport provided them an excuse to scream which, Kim explained, was all they really wanted. Their energy was ferocious. If North Korea ever attacks, I know who I’m hiding behind and it’s not the conscripted South Korean army of man-boys in dorky glasses.

Sometime during the first half I noticed a distinguished-looking gentleman cheering along with the girls—or attempting too. He was grinning and clapping on the wrong beats, obviously unfamiliar with the cheers, but enthusiastically so. During halftime, he approached us and asked me and Kim, in very slow, careful Korean, “Is the soccer game fun?”

This was back before the game when we figured this
was as close as we'd get to the players. HA!

I understood, but I looked at Kim to answer, since she’s the Korean of the two of us. Kim, who never hesitates, hesitated. Then she answered, (in Korean), “Uh . . . yes? I’m Korean!”

Confusion banished—maybe he’d assumed Kim was foreign because her English was so fluent?—they were off to the races chatting. I’m a student—this is my professor. Yes, she teaches English. She’s from Chicago—she loves soccer. I smiled and nodded at the parts I understood and accepted the business card he offered me that said, “From the office of the mayor of Haeundae.”

We took pictures together while the boys played (no one besides me seemed to be watching the game). We watched a video he’d had his secretary make for his grandson who lives in New York. We got invited to follow them after the game and meet the players.

You know, just because.

The girls in front of us screaming “최 강 부 산,” literally, “Busan is the best!” might as well have been a Greek chorus.

Kim and I took some pictures with the players and basked in their sweaty, exhausted victory (Busan I’Park rarely beats a team as well-ranked as Seoul FC) before walking the mayor to his private car and saying goodbye. Earlier in the game he told Kim to text him so we could all meet up for the next game (in two weeks). Kim said she’d like to, but she’s a student and we got the tickets for free. The mayor told us not to worry about that. No joke.

I have no expectation.s

Ladies and Gentlemen, the mayor of Haeundae! He said one of the main reasons he comes to the games is he likes the energy the young ones have to cheer.

"Busan is best!" Kim and I didn't get the memo that this was a serious picture. Oops!

"Really, Korea?" "Why not."

Meet and greet with the coach.

This player, #4 Park Jong-Woo, is famous for the scoring the winning goal over Japan to give Korea the bronze medal this past London Olympics. After scoring, Park lifted a protest sign "Dokdo is our land." A write-up of the kerfuffle is here. What is not mentioned in the article is that for part of Park's punishment, he still has to serve military service, which no other Olympic medal-winner has to do in Korea.

Goalkeeper Lee Beom-Yeong, who made four pretty dang nice saves this game to keep I'Park
ahead of Seoul through to the end. And of course, Kim, the awesome.

Kim hauled this guy off the line and asked to take a picture with him. I don't actually know his name or number, but he was very obliging. 

Feels great to feel short in Korea!

One of my former soccer teammates posts "WeirdhandWednesday" pictures every Wednesday. They crack me up because they aren't nearly as awkward as my hands are in every picture I take. Exhibit A, above.  These are some pro-level I'Park fans. I wish I'd thought to ask them to explain the offsides rule, just to see if they could.

Timeline

One of my favorite speaking class activities is making a life events timeline.

"Make a timeline of your life," I tell my students, "that includes the five most interesting, important events in your life. You have fifteen minutes: don't write your name on it until later!"

Fifteen minutes later I collect the timelines, number them, and tape them on the wall, sans names. Students have to read each other's timelines, ask questions, and figure out whose is whose. Then, when everyone's figured it out, names are written and I can give the kiddos credit for in-class participation.

It's a great activity for the first day or so of a conversation class. It's fun, low-pressure, and gives the students a chance to write and read before speaking. When they do speak, they have someone else's grammar from which to construct questions. It requires all sorts of students to speak to each other and it's a get-to-know you. On the teacher side of things,  I find out who can use the past tense reliably and who can't. Moreover, I learn about important events in my students' lives, helping me connect students to their English names.

It's also helpful with giving me perspective into the interesting, important events of my students' lives:

I worry about sex education in this country, but I'm happy at least that her
brother made the same list as her smart phone.

I enter the Kosin University: COURAGE.

I don't know what sick (or sike) tongue is, but I think the squiggles underneath are supposed to signify something pretty traumatic. 

This girl talks about her puppy in every class. And I have her four times a week. What's the Korean expression for "Please expand your vocabulary"?

Pictures are always appreciated, students. Always.

Sometimes I think my students don't realize English is a real language and that people will understand them when they speak it. 

Jason is okay now! Don't worry!

Ah yes. And there I am - right up there with new puppies, smart phones, and playing table tennis. YES.

Peer Review

In no uncertain terms, my university has announced that our contract renewal will be based upon our students reviews. I can think of stupider things to do (eat broccoli deep-fried in chocolate sauce, assign Elaine 46 students in one conversation class and 39 in a composition class, for instance). However, I’m going on to graduate school and not renewing my contract, so I don’t much care. Nevertheless, filled with curiosity, I read my student evaluations from last semester. Apparently, I didn’t teach my students well enough for them to write their evaluations in English, so I had to use Google translate.

And therein, I found a blog sitting, waiting. Judge me as you will:

English Literature Readings:

1.      Classes can have hope. 

2.      :D

3.      Professors like!

4.      Was a good time

5.      : D

Average rating: 4.24/5

Freshmen Conversation:

1.      Professor too too good

2.       Well done

3.       Painting because there are many difficulties. ((회화 means “conversation” as well as "painting," turns out) 

4.       Like Elaine professor

Average rating: 4.17/5

Global English

It was a good time for one semester. Well done

Perfect challenge and test my class as much as Professor does to me

Thanks for an unforgettable lesson.

thank you ~ ~ ^ ^

Professor contribute to lively classroom atmosphere was lively and good.

I love you Elaine

Good very Gute Elanine

Lacking we teach as well as many other makers suffer ^ ^

teacher very good! English is very fun! god bless you ~

Benefits have been

Salutary lesson was

suffering has

Was able to get a good knowledge.

La Lecture of the first foreign professor and fun and a lot of tension, but I hear it was painless.

Take courses on English as fear disappear

elaine!!!! I studied very hard this semester. Thank you. ♥

Did much trouble for one semester!

 _thank you. profassor_

Professor done

Was

Elaine ~ I was very happy to meet you. Thank you.

bye ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Average rating: 4.4/5

my personal favorite?

"Suffering has"

But turns out, it's a mistranslation (like 90% of the above, probably). "Suffering has," my friend Kim informed me, means "thank you for suffering for us" rather than "I endured much suffering." Turns out that's what my students have been saying for the past year and a half and that's the phrase I was told to repeat after every soccer game:

수고하셨습니다!

My prayer at the beginning of this week was that I might be grateful for my job, and boy did my students step up to the task. They're an eclectic bunch (not a word I use to describe Koreans very often) and I'm pretty sure this semester will be something fantastic.

Trip to the DMZ

We were picked up in an unmarked black SUV by a friendly driver who asked if we had our passports. After that things got a lot more normal as we joined the larger tour - perhaps thirty people in all - and drove north of Seoul to the DMZ. It was pretty bleak up there: every inch of the landscape blended into a smoggy, foggy, grey and brown smudge.

Security checkpoints, armed guards, constant warnings to "not take a photo" encompassed the majority of the morning. The rest of it was our tour guide, Michelle, who spoke in rapid-fire English punctuated by giggly yeps and rights and mhmmyeps. Every sentence started with "anyway" and often continued with "okay, now we gonna," but Michelle was knowledgeable, well-organized, and efficient. She got us from A to Zed with martial efficiency that, I imagine, would impress even the North Koreans.

There are many take-aways from the DMZ. The first is that North Korea still scares me and should probably scare everyone. My friend Ina said it well yesterday: they could do anything. We don't know. As I taught my students the other day, they're cray-cray. It was the infiltration tunnel that did it for me. South Korea has found four tunnels built for a land invasion from NK to SK. North Koreans used dynamite to tunnel into South Korean territory and, when found out, denied having built the tunnels. When pressed they admitted to digging them, but only for purposes of searching for coal, citing the black smears on the wall that they themselves left there. The geology of the region brooks no doubt that there is absolutely no coal anywhere nearby. It is estimated that another 20 un-found tunnels riddle the border. Cray-cray.

No photos are allowed in the tunnels, but they have an overly cheerful statue just outside. Korea loves juxtaposition.

The second take-away was one of many promptings for my previous post about jeong. All the bridges and roads along the DMZ are called "Peace" or "Unification" or some-such. I have never spoken to a Korean who does not support reunification, despite the immense danger and cost to the South. As their rocky relationship has teetered between intensely hostile and almost friendly over the past 60 years, South Koreans have alternately armed themselves and built train stations to connect Seoul to Pyeongyang. Someday, the South Koreans hope, this train station will be up and running, connecting North to South and reunifying the country.

In the meantime, they hope and pray.

If you do ever get the chance to go to the DMZ, I recommend taking either the JSA tour or a tour to the 3rd infiltration tunnel. Afterwards, I highly recommend the Korean War Museum. It's not only free but it's also one of the best museums I've ever visited.

Arubai?

They called me noona and held the very definition of trepidation in their eyes as they shuffled toward me.

Where are you from?

I’m from America.

Ah. How old are you?

I’m twenty-four.

Ah. You good!

This last was directed at my soccer playing abilities. I had been skirting the edges of the local soccer field, practicing my juggling on dribbling whilst watching soccer so bad only high school boys could play it so. When they took a break (from what, I’ll never know since they took turns running during their “game”), I took shots on goal.  At one point, three shuffling fourteen-year-old boys approached me.

After the above conversation, they ran away, their courage spent. But a minute later they were back.

Coach. Us. Talk. English. Soccer. Kachi. Coach!

Your coach wants me to talk to him?

Yes.

We “talked,” exhausting my limited Korean and everyone else’s limited English skills and I spent the next hour training with three gun-shy little Korean boys. I may or may not be committed to every Sunday from 5 until 6 for eternity, but I’m not entirely certain. I will go back next week, mostly because all three boys have potential and because if I have left Korea having taught three Korean boys to shoot with both feet and the concept of passing the ball and then moving to open space, I will consider my stint here on the peninsula worth it.

("arubai" is probably misspelled, but it's a Korean word meaning "part-time job." The Japanese call it "arubaito," but I've no idea why. Nor do I know if the coach really meant the "job" part of arubai or if he meant "volunteer." Only time will tell.)

A Concert for my Subway Car

            I hate the subways. On the other hand, most people think alighting the steps of a Busan Bus is comparable to crossing the Rubicon to dance with Damocles’ sword. It’s a melee where the last man standing is sometimes a hand-cart toting ahjumma or a smelly, staring ahjusshi but it is never a foreigner clutching her bus pass and crying out to God for the lost innocence of her personal space.

            Every criticism against the bus is well-deserved, earned by a myriad of late and crowded Daewoos careening through the streets with little respect for the human life both inside and outside its walls[1]. But at least they have fresh air coming through the constantly opening doors. At least they have windows.

The subways only have blank glares, stale air, and advertisements plastered over door, windows, and wall—advertisements for plastic surgery, for clearing my skin, perfecting my hair. There are no windows, only rows of frowners, people who jostle and steal your seat and cough on you. Doors open only to admit the hordes of overly perfumed women, smelly men, and dull-eyed students—batches of automatons politely ignoring everyone else’s existence. Headphones, smartphones, and i-somethings appear from nowhere: tiny, electronic shields. No one smiles.

I don’t often take the subway during to-and-from-work times, but today I had to drop my violin off at its babysitter’s, so I hauled myself out of bed, skipped Bible study and joined the masses in the tube of disappointed dreams and despair.

Okay, I promise I’m finished being maudlin. That was the last one.

I had gone through my Bible memory verses on the bus and so attempted to pray on the subway. No dice. I’m not a good prayer at the best of times, but without a pen in my hand or even the hint of a skyline I’m hopeless. I patted my violin case in consolation and suddenly realized I was going to miss my little fiddle. Two months is a long time apart and we’ve been through a lot together—All State nerves, symphony and scholarship auditions, concerto performances, and that time when I was awarded a scholarship violin that was way better and my heart wandered for a semester or three . . .

A song floated into my mind—

            Come thou font of every blessing

            Tune my heart to sing thy grace

            Streams of mercy, never ceasing,

            Call for songs of loudest praise

            Teach me some melodious sonnet

            Sung by flaming tongues above—!

            Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,

            Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Prone to wander in prayer, prone to leave my focus behind and chase after rabbit trails of thought instead of the God I love, I was grateful for the hymn. It haunted my mind, prayer-like, until my fingers itched to share it. I patted my violin case one more time.

“Not now,” I told it quietly, even as my heart thudded with excitement. “I’m on the subway and people stare enough at the foreigner. It’s scary to be different and we already sang on Sunday. It’s time for goodbye, not worship.”

But the idea grew like the thump, thump, thump of the Telltale Heart, and I had to work hard to consider the logistics. No room, too many people, too many disapproving stares, and too many stops of embarrassment to go before I could escape. But my fingers itched, my heart thumped and I knew that within, courage and fear within were tapping their toes to the beat I would play.

In the first car on the subway, there’s a small extra space for standing. I moved there with seven stops to go, unzipping the outer case, leaving the lock untouched. With six stops to go, I took off my scarf and the fingerless glove on my left hand. I set my purse down behind me and my case next to it. I stooped and sprung the lock. A finger brushed across the strings—still in tune—a look at the bridge—still straight. Tightened my bow. Took a deep breath. The eyes of all in the car were on me, but still I faced the wall.

With five stops to go, the subway emerges from the earth’s depths and becomes an elevated train. It was then—mountains and buildings flew by; the sun peaked in the windows, past the advertisements about fixing my skin, my nose, my eyes, obscuring the screens of the i-somethings—time to begin. I slipped my puffy coat off my left shoulder and turned to my audience.

The song was raw. My fingers shook, my legs wobbled, and I worried about the jolting starts and stops as we passed through the stations. Come Thou Font, simple; Amazing Grace, timeless; Flowers of Edinburgh, a toe-tapper.

I saw one head bob with the beat, but didn’t catch anyone’s eyes. I couldn’t smile. I looked out at the sun, facing my body toward the window and my violin’s sound down the long, metallic aisle and played as best my trembling fingers could manage.

It was at once a temporary farewell to Korea, a fist-pump of fighting! to the dull-eyed students, a thumbed nose at the glaring, staring, judging anti-toe tappers frowning at me. It was a timid cry for a revolution of joy and quirkiness, a suggestion to look up from their phones, a hope that the day would be brighter than an average, pushy subway ride. It was a little song of praise, too—wobbly and raw—to God, who has grown me to the point where I have the courage to stand up in a subway car full of grey, slumped shoulders and sing.

With one stop to go, I ended on an impertinent little g-chord and packed up. I pulled my left glove back on, slipped my arm back into my coat, and wound my scarf around my neck. Violin strapped to my left side, purse hanging on my right. I checked my cell phone, readied my subway card, and stepped into the cold, cold morning. 

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[1] Today my bus driver pull a three-point 360 on a 30% incline, backtracking faster than the Millenium Falcon in order to avoid an ephemeral traffic jam. It was impressive, terrifying, and needless.