14. Ants

There were plenty of ants in my grandparents’. Unattended food attracted them and would be covered with them quickly. Grandmother used to scoop the ants up from the stew or soup, heat up, and serve the food. I even saw warrior ants which had claws and big heads. Since then, I have seen many ants in Korea and America, but never seen those warrior ants again.

 

To avoid the ants, grandma hung baskets under the eaves and put the food containers in them. She also put water in a very large bowl and put the containers there. Sometime, the containers reached the edge and ants could find the access route. So, she put a smaller bowl upside down in the middle of the water, created an island, and put food containers on top of it. That method seemed to work. 

 

I used to play with the ants. I put an ant on the tip of the toothpick or stick and put it in the water. Ants could easily float on the water if they released the hold. But they did not. The ants wouldn’t let it go and drown. I would take them out of the water and put them in the sun. Some ants would wake up and go home. 

 

I think about those ants. How many times have I done the same thing, hanging and grabbing onto something and never letting it go? I would have been free if I just let it go. 

 

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) explains only 20% of ants are actually working. They removed those 20% working ants from the group. New 20% showed up among the remaining 80% ants and started to work. Then, they put the original 20% back into the group. Slowly, the number of working ants reduced down to 20% again. 

 

20% of people own 80% of the world wealth, workers only work 20% of the working hours productively no matter how long they stay at work, and we only wear 20% of the clothes in the closet.  

 

In addition to the ants, there were bed bugs. Insects and pests were very common then. There were pest control vendors going around. They used DDT, very strong chemical. The vender wearing mask will go to the room alone and sprayed the chemical. There were rumors that these vendors took money and valuables from the room. 

 

While my father was fixing up the house to sell, we rented a house in Sam Chung Dong. I went back home and joined the family. The home was strange and foreign to me. Food was different. I was not used to fish soup, which we had often. We had to finish all the food given. Father did not allow us to leave the food on our plates.

 

Father sold the house, bought a large piece of land in Gu Pa Bal, suburb of Seoul, and built a big house. He was going to build the second floor later, so the top was a large slab. It was known as ‘slab house.’ The neighborhood did not have the power. There was no running water, either. We used the hand pump to draw underground water. Lamps and candles were lit at night. I went home after we got the power.