My father, I’m slowly learning, is a man of many words. And within those many words, a few of them actually make sense. I’m learning this after his response to my childhood friend G breaking up with his girlfriend of eight years and my own long distance relationship.

As mentioned before, my dog recently died, and he was, as my father says, his only son. So I’ve been spending a lot of time with him. And with G now permanently crashing on my couch (the stress of that will be in the next issue) in a depressing heap of man, I’ve had a lot of sad men around me. Somehow, in my little brain, I thought Mr. Kim and G could be friends and be sad together. And it happened!

 My father is, um, lets just say a bit of a ladies’ man. He can barely string together a coherent sentence in English, but if there’s a pretty lady around, he can chat them up in any language you can think of. 

So the three of us are at dinner, and my dad keeps asking why G is so sad, and I tell him, “Be nice. He and his girlfriend just broke up.” And my father proceeds to give G his words of wisdom. Which are as follows:

“G, girls are like birds. They can’t walk fast, but they can fly fast. So why try to hold onto something that can fly faster than you. And if you catch the bird, and it keeps trying to fly away, why do you want to keep it?”

And then: “G, girls are like buses. They aren’t going to wait for you, so don’t wait for them.”

His advice to me regarding my long distance relationship was as follows:

“Eul Sanga, guys are like books. If you pick one up and just open up, you never know what chapter you’re on. So be careful.”

And then: “Eul Sanga, men say that they love you but it’s a lie. They can only truly love you forever after they’ve done EVERYTHING they’ve wanted to do in their life. So don’t trust any man who says they love you.”

I can’t make this sh-t up, and you know what? My dad is actually right. Damn, he is a wise old man.