::A Geek in Korea::

One of the children that lives on the tenth floor of my apartment building is a little strange. He’s very polite, but he always asks lots of questions to the people he meets in the elevator. This is atypical elevator behavior for most Korean people, which give me the "Elephant in the room" reaction most of the time. I’ve rode with him two times, and I can just sort of accept that he’s going to ask something utterly baffling to me each time I see him.

The first time I rode the elevator with him, I was with my wife. We were going out, and he asked me where I was from in Korean. I told him I was from the United States, and he made me repeat myself a few times. He then asked if my wife had gone there, and she replied she hasn’t visited the United States yet. Then he asked me if I had visited there. Confused, I answer that I had visited the States before, then I got out of the elevator.

The second time I rode with him, we were with an exterminator. As we rode up, he asked what the exterminator was going to kill. The man replied he was going to kill mosquitos. The boy then asked me if there were a lot of mosquitos in America. I was impressed, because it had been a few weeks since I told him where I was from.

When the exterminator got off, I had to ride up with him to my floor. He asked me how high elevators were in the United States (I think). I told him I had been on a hundred story elevator once. This was true, as I had visited the Sears Tower in Chicago, which had 110 stories. I said this as  the door was closing in the elevator, but I could hear him squeal in delight and amazement. I think he was under the impression everyone lives in apartment complexes like in Korea, and that my previous apartment was 100 stories tall. 

I wonder if he has some sort of mental condition. He seems to have that endless curiousity paired with the lack of common sense that younger, innocent, but attentive children have. The strange thing is that he seems much too old for this usually positive quality to make it seem wholesome.