Working three years at a club as a head bartender to put myself through university seriously deteriorated my tolerance for drunk people. However, living above one of Cheonan's foreign bars and smack dab downtown my tolerance of it has changed into something more to amuse myself with and be entertained by. My tolerance for drunks at 3am yelling their heads off and pushing over scooters and crashing into parked cars however, there is no tolerance for that. So when I heard the first crash against a parked car outside my window, I woke up and was peering out the window.
Four high school kids arguing, totally drunk and totally annoyingly loud. Snickers urged me to come back to bed but when one of them banged into yet another parked car, he joined me window side. Then, when one of them violently pushed over my neighbour's scooter, so we decided to get involved.
My neighbour is a hard working man who delivers food till about 1am and then goes back from 2-3am to pick up the dishes he had delivered earlier. He had just finished for the day and I had just seen him park his scooter and go up the stairs when these young high school kids came and pushed over his scooter. He came back out, followed them down the street calling them back but they ignored him and continued on their way. I knew if we didn't help him than no one would and that's the truth. Snickers and I have become kind of like the assigned "neighbourhood watch". We have some neighbours who call us before they decide to call the cops when drama hits the street and they almost always call us when drama pours out of Banana Bar or there is any foreigner involved.
Down the stairs Snickers flew and I was quick to follow. He hadn't noticed that my Gangsta Gotti had been pushed over but when I saw it lying there I was fuming. I ran up to the kids and yelled at them (in Korean). One of the kids kept on saying sorry so I asked him "does that fit my scooter? Does sorry fix this man's scooter?" I am so beyond people using the word sorry. It's got to be one of the most misused and abused words in the dictionary.
Anyways, so this kid goes on about how he has no money to pay me for the obvious damages to my scooter, which I thought rather ironic considering he had enough money to get him and his three buddies drunk. Our arguing continued and my poor neighbour stayed quiet -- he is way too sweet to get into confrontation like this and later admitted to being intimidated by both Snickers and I because he knows a bit of our "Danager Couple" status.
Snickers held one guy by the scruff of his collar and I kept on yelling at one guy to be quiet. He cried, he screamed, he yelled, he spat... and, when he gets the bill for my scooter, I am sure he'll poop his pants too. I was getting more and more annoyed by this one kid who was crying one minute and yelling the next but when he went to go hit Snickers I snapped. I body checked him as if he were a quarterback about to help make the Superbowl winning point. He went flying into the side of the store building and I stood there totally waiting for him or his buddies to retaliate. Nothing became of it beyond me yelling at him more and threatening his friends to stay put because the police were coming.
Finally the police arrived. It didn't take them long to reach pure frustration with these kids so when one of the kid's noted that I had hurt his buddy when I pushed him, I got a kind of half smile from the police officer. The police officers put the kid who had damaged our scooters into the back of the cruiser but as he went to drive away that one crazy, multi-emotions kid tried to kick the cruiser so the officer got back out. There was a brief moment when we all were expecting the officer to smack the kid but nothing beyond raising his hand and more yelling resulted.
The police station is but a five minute walk from our house so we walked there with our neighbour. "I was hoping you would show us a hook or jab instead of pushing that kid" he jokingly told me.At the station the kid they brought in looked miserable and sorry but his buddies walked in after us, looking to stir up more trouble. "That foreign ajjumma pushed my friend" he yelled. "Ya, it's call self defence. Attack me or my husband again and again I will do it" I answered. I clearly didn't have to explain myself to the police officer and I was sure that after him having to deal with them even if I had upper cut the kid I wouldn't have gotten into trouble.
A report was made, hands were shook and supposedly now this kid will be meeting up with us to pay us in person for the damages to Gotti. I joked with Snickers, telling him I was going to make the kid come to our boxing club to pay me. Give him a little scare as to how easily he actually got off and who he messed with!!!
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