Counting to Ten

I once had a dream where I was a child and all I could speak was Korean.  It wasn't a scary dream or an unsettling one. but for some reason it's one of the few dreams that I remember (one of the others had to do with our house in Minnesota having an ice cream parlor built downstairs - both these dreams I've had as an adult).  

I had kind of forgotten about this dream until recently where I was asked to count to ten out loud in Korean.  The request triggered the recollection of my dream and I decided to decline.  For some reason, the idea that I would have to think how to count discouraged me from a simple and harmless request.  It made me wonder on a larger scale, if my lack of Korean speaking prowess was based merely on some sort of mental block.  I mean, if I could dream in Korean, I must know something, right?

My typical excuse for why I don't speak Korean fluently is because I grew up in Minnesota.  This excuse actually has a huge whole in it since I went to a Korean church and my best friend (Mr. Jang-Soo Bruce Lee) is also Korean (even though he is far better at speaking Mandarin).  While I might not have had kids to speak Korean with at school, I most definitely had the opportunity to speak Korean at church.  Alas, for some reason, I didn't, and things have been this way ever since, even though I took Korean for two years during college.

I was visiting the aforementioned Bruce for his birthday in New York (I was able to see my sister for her birthday, as well - two birds with one stone).  As I hailed a cab at the end of the night, I tried to explain to the cab driver I needed to get to 12th street.  I wasn't sure if he understood me (English, not his first language, Spanish his first, and I was pretty plastered), as I heard him ask "Welch?"  He might've been saying "12th" but I wasn't going to take any chances.  So I started to think about how to say 12th in Spanish (took it for 3 years) and I found myself starting to count to twelve in Korean.  I eventually was able to change my train of thought to Spanish and got to my sister's place safely without a hitch.  But now I wonder if that I just need to drop my guard to let that that young version of me in my dream out so he can blabber on without feeling self-conscious.