flipped - winrina ff

Minjeong: Brawk-Brawk-Brawk!

Eggs scare me. Chickens, too. And buddy, you can laugh at that all you want, but I’m being dead serious here.

It started in the sixth grade with eggs.

And a snake.

And the Yu brothers.

The Yu brothers’ names are Taeyong and Jaehyun, but even now I can’t tell you which one’s which. You never see without the other. And even though they’re not twins, they do look and sound pretty much the same, and they’re both in Chaewon’s class, so maybe one of them got held back.

Although I can’t exactly see a teacher voluntarily having either of those maniacs two years in a row.

Regardless, Taeyong and Jaehyun are the ones who taught me that snakes eat eggs. And when I say they eat eggs, I’m talking they eat them raw and shell-on whole.

I probably would’ve gone my entire life without this little bit of reptilian trivia if it hadn’t been for Chaewon. Chaewon had this major-league thing for Huh Yunjin, who lives about three blocks down, and every chance she got, she went down there to hang out while he practiced the drums. Well, boomboom-whap, what did I care, right? But then Yunjin and Jimin’s brothers formed a band, which they named Mystery Pisser.

When my mom heard about it, she completely wigged out. “What kind of parents would allow their children to be in a band named Mystery Pisser? It’s vile. It’s disgusting!”

“That’s the whole point, Mom,” Chaewon tried to explain. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just to get a rise out of old people.”

“Are you calling me old, young lady? Because it’s certainly getting a rise out of me!”
Chaewon just shrugged, implying that my mom could draw her own conclusion.

“Go! Go to your room,” my mother snapped.
“For what?” Chaewon snapped back. “I didn’t say a thing!”

“You know perfectly well what for. Now you go in there and adjust your attitude, young lady!”

So Chaewon got another one of her teenage time-outs, and after that any time Chaewon was two minutes late coming home for dinner, my mother would messenger me down to Yunjin’s house to drag her home. It might have been embarrassing for Chaewon, but it was worse for me. I was still in elementary school, and the Mystery Pisser homies were in high school. They were ripe and ragged, raging power chords through the neighborhood, while I looked like I’d just gotten back from Sunday school.

I’d get so nervous going down there that my voice would squeak when I’d tell Chaewon it was time for dinner. It literally squeaked.
But after a while the band dropped Mystery from their name, and Pisser and its entourage got used to me showing up. And instead of glaring at me, they started saying stuff like, “Hey, baby sis, come on in!” “Hey, Jeongie girl, wanna jam?”

This, then, is how I wound up in Huh Yunjin’s garage, surrounded by high school kids, watching a boa constrictor swallow eggs. Since I’d already seen it down a rat in the Yu brothers’ bedroom, Pisser had lost at least some of the element of surprise. Plus, I picked up on the fact that they’d been saving this little show to freak me out, and I really didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.

This wasn’t easy, though, because watching a snake swallow an egg is actually much creepier than you might think. The boa opened its mouth to an enormous size, then just took the egg in and glub! We could see it roll down its throat.

But that wasn’t all. After the snake had glubbed down three eggs, Taeyong or Jaehyun said, “So, Jeongie girl, how’s he gonna digest those?”

I shrugged and tried not to squeak when I answered, “Stomach acid?”