After living in San Francisco for about a year and returning to Seoul, I received a bunch of greetings, and strangely enough, they were all so contradictory.
‘You look a bit tanned! Looking healthy.’
‘Your face seems paler now?’
‘Did you gain some weight?’
‘You’ve lost too much weight.’
‘Have you been working out? You look fit.’
But according to my colleagues, who I was tired of seeing, my skin was already dark even before I left, and my weight hadn’t changed a bit. Plus, the only exercise I did was walking around.
At first, I found it puzzling, but considering these weren’t people who usually took a keen interest in me, it’s understandable that they didn’t remember how I looked a year ago. I was more of the type who stayed put rather than going out and wasn’t the one to show up at gatherings or parties regularly. So, I just went with the flow and responded appropriately,
‘Oh really? The sunshine in San Francisco is no joke.’
‘I guess it’s because I was mostly indoors.’
‘Maybe because the meat there is cheap?’
‘The food didn’t quite agree with me.’
‘There’s a park near my house…’
Most comments were easy to brush off. But still,
‘You seem taller.’
What was going through that person’s mind? Seriously, like I could’ve grown taller!
Leave a Reply