It's never the same day twice, this is surely true with running Hulk's...
I bought a funky red bar stool to replace the broken one behind the juice bar that I can only "half-cheek" sit on. It arrived today and, well, it didn't quite turn out to be the awesome cool new stool I anticipated it to be; it's too short. "Too short" as in if I sit up as straight as possible, you can only see my head above the counter. Somewhere in the zillion billion strange and deranged stool names, which really aren't names but instead combos of alphabet letters and numbers, I purchased the wrong one. It cost me $50 to buy a bar stool fit for a dwarf's bar.
After our Hulkies finished training, had showered and left the club, I found a cellphone in the club. With it's battery dead, I plugged it in and then went back to it some hours later to see if I could figure out who its owner is. Koreans love their selfies so I clicked on the photo album and opened it to take a look. If someone were to vote on whose cell it was based on just the photos, they'd probably think it was mine. There were many pictures of me. Some of them were pictures of pictures of me, clearly those which are posted within our club, but then there were candid pictures of me, like one of me walking out of the former office and me tying my shoes. It was 3am and there I stood at the juice bar, with a cellphone containing more pictures of me than I'd ever expect a member's phone to have. I ended up calling my own cell from theirs and that's when I found out whose phone it was. Honestly, I was quite relieved to find out whose phone it was. It belongs to one of our younger Hulkies, a mentally handicap boy who spends anywhere from 2-5 hours every workday here. Given his special circumstance I seriously would be freaked out if it were anyone but his phone.
He's super strange at times but I have a lot of fun joining in his make-believe language conversations that are no more than simple grunts and mumbles. Members are no longer caught off guard or react to his yelling and cheering when he plays pool by himself in the corner and he's kind of found his place here, so to speak. He's noticed that Snickers wears handwraps that are much different than others, they're more like white gauze that's as stringy as it is lengthy. With two random shoelaces he picked up somewhere, he has decided to make his own handwraps and he wraps the two laces solely around his knuckles. I think it's actually quite cute, him trying to be all hardcore like Snickers and some of our more intense male boxers. His father comes in once in awhile to watch him train and to ask about his behaviour but there's really no need because he really isn't a problem. I once kicked him out of the club but that was more so because I had told him to leave and he made such a fuss. I thought that going back on my word would make me look weak to all watching so I stood my ground. It really wasn't a problem though, I was just more or less setting an example. He is a good kid really, and despite him being at the age where puberty is starting up, I vouch he's still very innocent and doesn't really understand what he's doing or what he's saying at times, like when he greets me with his Westside hand symbol he often greets me with.
It takes all types and I think it's fair to say we have all types here at Hulk's. And despite the vast variety of members we have here they really do all blend nicely together. Sometimes I wonder if our members know or grasp the full diversity of those who train here. For the most part our members are young, ranging from elementary school to fresh out of university, but their social backgrounds and walks of life so greatly range. Sometimes I get a good kick out of it, the social clashes with those training together. I'll see a nine year old counting the reps for a university student doing this month's challenge, a CEO helping out a high school drop-out master doing a pull-up, and a housewife stretching with entrepreneur. Many of Korea's social norms with social status and age seem to be left at the door when they step into Hulk's and I love that. It is as amusing as it is admirable and very cool. "We are the united nations of Cheonan" Snickers once told me and sometimes I think so. We definitely have a sense of "familyship" here and yes, I know that's not a word but that's ok. I can make up my own words if I want to because no other word really is fitting to what we have here.
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