Conversation book
Merlin Mann’s post Making the Clackity Noise inspired me to just, you know, write SOMETHING to jump-start my blog. It actually only took me a moment to remember this story:
Back when I was in my mid-twenties, my whole family traveled to Neustift, Austria for my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. We stayed together for a week, which was fun, but what I was really looking forward to was the two weeks I would have after that by myself riding the rails and doing some solo exploring.
The first stop on my solo adventure was Bonn, Germany. I found a little guest house to stay at and got well settled down for my few days I had allotted and then headed out to look for dinner. My challenge was that after having a week of Austrian food, I was ready for something very, very different. Also, my German was, well, horrible but I had just finished a year of Korean so naturally that was, well, awful as well. Be that as it may, Korean food was exactly what I felt like so when I saw a group of Korean tourists, I screwed up my courage and somehow managed to communicate to them that I was looking for a Korean restaurant. We all ended up going there together and the long and the short of it was that I hit it off with one of the girls in the group, we went to some museums together over the next few days and then promised to write to each other.
Well, even though I was in my mid-twenties, I was rather naïve. I imagined quite the romantic relationship between us even though I honestly can’t recall now if we ever even kissed. (I’m sure if we did, nothing beyond that happened. I’m sure I’d remember that.) I diligently wrote letters to her spending long hours with my English-Korean dictionary trying to convey to her what my days were like and how long the nights were without her. When I was at the shore in my native Massachusetts I gazed across the water imagining that this same water could conceivably be touching her island of Chejudo and I would send my love out to her. She wrote back very articulate letters telling me of her days and assuring me of her love. It couldn’t have been more romantic.
This went on for quite a few months and became an important part of my life, considering the amount of time it took me to write just one letter, and the time it took for the round-trip airmail. One day, I mentioned my correspondence to one of my Korean classmates. My friend nodded and said, “Oh, yeah, she’s using a conversation book.”
“A what?” I replied.
“A conversation book. They have all sorts of different paragraphs written out depending on what you want to say. They’re made for learning English and for sending to penpals.”
Now, to this day I have no reason to believe that my “girlfriend” was insincere in her expressions, but it certainly dampened my passions to know that while I was struggling to express myself in Korean, she was transcribing stock copy out of a book. When, a short time later I met someone who I could actually date in the flesh, I didn’t hesitate to send a Dear Jane letter saying that this long distance thing just wasn’t working out.
Although I was a little hurt at the time, in retrospect, I don’t regret the experience. The imaginary romance was fun, no harm came to me, and she appeared to take the breakup well. If anything it was a great lesson for this Internet Age, where the “friends” you meet over the screen may or may not be who they seem. Like my “girlfriend,” there’s nothing wrong with an internet friend who is part fantasy, as long as you don’t deceive yourself into thinking the person really is who you think they are. If nothing else, they can help you with your conversation skills.
