Mint Condition
What possessions does your family treasure? The first English phrase I memorized in Canada wasn’t “bless you” or “nice to meet you.” It was “mint condition.” I was ten years old, standing in a 7-Eleven in suburban Vancouver, staring at the wall of baseball cards behind the counter like they held the secrets to understanding my new country. My father, who spoke even less English than I did, pointed at a pack of 1995 Topps and held up two fingers. Our first foreign purchase: two packs of baseball cards and the beginning of an unexpected education. Back in Seoul, I collected manhwa cards and knew every character in my favorite series. But baseball cards were different. They were not just pictures; they were cultural windows that I desperately wanted to look into. Each card came with its own universe: statistics, stories, vocabulary like ERA, RBI, batting average, and rookie year. While my classmates were learning about history from textbooks, I was learning it through the stories on the b...