The Haunting Woman: An Uncanny Earworm

I might sound like an aging boomer, but really google is awesome. You’re probably wondering, “uhh, did you just discover that?” I mean I’ve always known it was awesome, I’d use it to settle arguments and solve earworms, and random what, where, or how questions. but I never really valued it until The Who came in?

I almost ran mad!

I’d been watching this new thriller k-drama, and the female lead caught my eye. For days I was wondering why I was so attached to this lady? It wasn’t her beauty, I mean she was pretty but nothing particularly striking. I would pause and stare at her during closeup scenes with her (no I am not a creep). And then it hit me, she reminded me of someone! A fellow Korean actress, a much older one. Now I am not one to subscribe to the “all Asians look alike” stereotype, because they clearly don’t. This lady didn’t look like the much older actress, it was her mannerisms, the way her mouth would slightly part as if she was breathing through it. The way her eyes looked droopy when she was thinking. The way her lips almost blended into her face with no lines around it.

The search

I knew I knew this woman, I had watched a series where she was featured. The question was where, when, what, and who was she. It was like she tormented me. I would wake up each day thinking of her. Flashes of her face would haunt me when I couldn’t sleep. Just who was this woman!!!

I went about searching. I know she was an older woman not less than 40. So I started searching for all the Ahjumma’s I could find in k-dramas. But she wasn’t among the popular ones. Then I started narrowing it down to the dramas I had watched, but I had been watching K-dramas for almost ten years. This was going to take forever.

Slowly I started remembering the role she had played. I knew she was someone’s mum and she had died in the movie. Then I knew for a certainty that I had watched that drama on my old handicapped laptop that was still sitting in my sister’s room. I pumped and dusted the old thing and went to my k-drama folder. A folder of K-dramas I would gladly erase my memory of them, just to watch them again. Say what you want about K-dramas, there are definitely gems there.

Eureka!

As I opened the folder, my foggy brain gained momentum. I could remember another actress in the drama, then I remembered the drama. After painstakingly checking each file, each episode, perusing through each scene. I found her!

She was a cameo that had only appeared in 3 of the 16 episodes of this drama. The next challenge was finding out who she was. I went to google and checked every cast in the drama, but she wasn’t listed. Was she so insignificant that she wasn’t even listed amongst the cast? For real she was the leading actress’s mum? Exactly! That was as simple as I needed it to be. A simple google search of who was …’s mum in …? And I found her!

There wasn’t anything spectacular about her, she had only featured in a few dramas and was a C-List actress. However, her performance in those few episodes had been captured in my memory. Two years after seeing her she haunted me through another lady!

It was scary and exciting, and yes it took me almost a week to find her. I know if it wasn’t for google, I would probably be sitting across from my therapist ranting about this haunting woman!