Mr. Han: Not Nearly As Uncool As Once Thought.
Every now and again, I’m going to bring back an older post that many of you frequenting my site may not have had the opportunity to read. Here is one of them now:
Everyone at work smokes. So, naturally, I pretend I do to have an excuse to go out back every hour or so for a few minutes to get away from the people demanding sprinkles and coffee (which we don’t have, lady).
Anyways, I go outside and our new head sushi chef, Mr. Han, is out there smoking a cigarette. He used to work only one or two days a week, but our head sushi guy (i’m not kidding) got sick of America and decided to go back to South Korea. Way to weigh your options, pal.
As I walk outside, Mr. Han taps me on the shoulder, points to a jet in the sky and says “Plane.”
“Yea. It sure is,” I reply.
He then pantomimes jumping out of an airplane, points to himself and says, “Me. Uh…South Korean special forces.”
Me: “You jumped out of planes? How many times?”
Mr. Han: “Uh…three…four hundred times?”
Me: “Damn.”
Mr. Han: “In South Korea…20, 21, 22…you in army.”
Me: “How long were you in the army?”
Mr. Han: “Three years…four years…five years.”
Me: “Did you ever kill anyone?”
Mr. Han: “Uh…14…15?”
Holy frickin’ crank. With just this exchange, Mr. Han has already reached a level of badass I will never attain. But there’s more:
Mr. Han: “I not know for sure…”
Me: “Why not?”
He then thinks it over and then (no lie) makes a “throwing a grenade” motion and then shrugs his shoulders to suggest he doesn’t know how many North Koreans he killed because he just wildly threw grenades around on the battlefield.
Mr. Han, thank you for being such an amazing man.
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:45
lol, I’m a former Marine, so this was one of my favorite stories from your site, and still is.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:09
I dearly love your website. I don’t waitress as much as I used to (40-70 hours per week with all the BS that comes along with it), but I still moonlight at a local restaurant. After coming home the other night with $12 and a 2% tip (partly because we were slow, partly due to the trash that comes in there), I sat back with a bottle of unnamed alcohol and a cigarette and read the last month or so’s worth of your entries I had missed. Excellent as usual! Definitely gave me the cynical humor I needed to get up for work the next morning. Keep it up, man! To be a server is to have a heart of steel and the patience of a Tibetan monk.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:28
!
April 29th, 2007 at 7:50
lol…dude…Mr. Han for president…enjoying your blog from Iraq.