When school’s out for summer, most teenagers just want to kick back, sleep late, perhaps mow some yards, maybe get a part-time job at the mall.
Morgan Tepsic has slightly larger ambitions: He wishes to conquer Asia.
His plan doesn’t involve military maneuvers or weapons of mass destruction ” just felt and thread. This 17-year-old student aims to warm the hearts of Asians one homemade stuffed animal at a time.
Tepsic, who will be a senior this fall at Putnam City High School, has spent two years constructing what he calls “blurbs,” square-shaped, pillowy creatures with pupil-less eyes and two rows of sharp teeth. He likes to give them away to girls he wants to meet ” particularly of the Asian persuasion.
KOREA-BOUND
“Basically,” he said, “if I see a girl that I like and you know, she seems interested, I give her a blurb and she’s like, ‘Wow, you make stuffed animals,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I do.'”
He’ll have the chance to test his romantic prowess in spades starting July 10, when he arrives in South Korea as part of a two-week youth ambassador trip. He’s one of a dozen PCHS students going, but he said he ‘s likely the only one who “wants to do something instead of just sightsee.”
“I want to do my own thing because I paid a lot of money for it,” Tepsic said. “I really just want people in Korea to know that there’s a guy in Oklahoma that loves them.” “Rod Lott
This article appears in Jun 13-19, 2007.