Kitty Kitty Limbo

I am required to attend the weekly teachers’ meetings on Monday afternoons. The meeting starts when a woman stands up and speaks briefly, and then everyone stands up, looks at the Korean flag at the front of the room, smacks their hands on their hearts, and sits back down. After that, people proceed to speak in turns. I mostly just watch their mouths make sounds, wondering where precisely in the room between their mouths and my ears the meaning of those sounds dissolves. Sometimes I write down what it sounds like they’re saying. At a recent meeting, the Vice Principal stepped to the front of the room with a prepared rant. When he was not gesticulating, his hands gripped the sides of the podium. His speech was long and emphatic. “Kitty kitty limbo!” he shouted at one point, irate. “Cheeba wise hair?!” He leaned forward, knuckles white, forehead glistening, and cast his appalled eyes around the room. No one answered. The teachers all looked at the stapled pieces of paper in their hands. Long seconds passed. “Bang shuttle tampon,” the Vice Principal said quietly, in a tone that sounded to me exactly like “that’s what I thought.”
Afterwards, the Principal, a much gentler and softer-spoken man, swept his arm back and forth repeatedly, speaking of a princess who could yodel. He threw an imaginary something over his shoulder and cheerfully asked us not to chew the yellow book.

But what about the war? Here’s the latest (buried deep in the site) from CNN.com: “South Korea's defense ministry will show wreckage of a sunken ship to a group of Twitter users in an effort to dispel doubts among young skeptics about its investigation blaming North Korea for attacking the vessel….” Twitter. Huh. The article continued, “Twenty users of the microblogging site will have a chance to review the evidence Friday after applying through the defense ministry's Twitter page.…” Last week North Korea threatened “all-out-war” if provoked. I wonder if tweets are considered provocation. Koreans have to maneuver, it seems, as if they’re living in the eye of a hurricane. Any significant movement one way or another would have them out of the eerie calm and into certain destruction. And eerie it is, when the rhetoric from the north consists of phrases like “There is no need to show any mercy or patience for such confrontation maniacs, sycophants and traitors and wicked warmongers as the Lee Myung Bak group [whose] call for "resolute measure" is as foolish and ridiculous a suicidal act as jumping into fire with faggots on its back." Provocation, hurled insults, name-calling, and then silence. Maybe I didn’t misunderstand the Vice Principal’s words. Maybe this IS “kitty kitty limbo.”