A clever plan

I come up with the clever plan of seducing my mother-in-law.

You can tell how old a Korean woman is by how curly hair is. They start with long straight hair. Perhaps it doesn't start long, but it gets there pretty quick, and stays long and straight for a long time.

And then she turns forty, and her hair starts to curl. Wavy at first, then gradually closing into a curl when they are fifty, and then into a puffy curl when they are 65. This change is motivated by thinning hair, and it occurs to me that it is not a phenomenon restricted to Korean women. But this is where I became aware of it. At 75, the curl tightens- I'm not sure why this is.

My wife is not yet forty, but has 65 year old hair. At first I find it offensive, but it grows on me. Not literally, of course, I'm still charmingly thin up top, but lituristically. And now I find it quite attractive.

We are sitting in the living room. Lucy is shooting her bow and arrow. I'm rubbing a bruise. Eunjoo is combing her curls with a hair pick. My mother-in-law comes in and sits down. She only has three or four things that she ever says. Here is one of them: She points to Lucy and I and says we look like twins. Lucy has a new response: she gestures back at my mother-in-law and my wife, and says that they look like twins.

My mother-in-law is overjoyed by this, my wife under-joyed, and I have the seed of a clever plan in my head.

The plan is not fully formed, but my mother-in-law is on the market, and it occurs to me that if I become my wife's step-father, she might finally start listening to me.

I get up, and walk off to the bathroom. As I go in, I look back and give my mother-in-law the eyes. Here goes.