On the hook

When I was five years old, I accidentally scattered a box of fishing hooks.

The hooks were small, black, with sharp barbs. We picked them all up, but apparently some got caught in the thick pile of the carpet, and one hook dug into Daddy's heel.

Oh, how Daddy screamed! Almost wept.

Daddy crying was so unusual that it made me laugh out loud for some reason.

I thought he was faking it. Could a lousy hook make my daddy cry? It just couldn't be!

So I scattered the gear again, this time on purpose, to see if I was wrong about Dad.

When my father saw this, he got angry, put the hooks under lock and key, and told me to experiment on myself instead of him.

I hooked myself that very night. It had sunk deep into my foot, like the claw of a bird of prey. It wasn't easy to pull it out, the sharp barb clinging to the tender flesh and causing me excruciating pain.

So that's how it is! So Dad wasn't faking it, he was really crying.

Life is pain

I grew up as a hypersensitive child.

When my mother wiped me down with a towel after a shower, I would shrink and clench.

I wanted to take the towel away and wipe myself - softly, gently, not as if a rough brush had been run over your body, trying to peel off your skin and make you all red.

Bathing, combing my hair - all this my mother did with a kind of wildness - nervous, impetuous, angry. I screamed my head off when she cut my nails almost to the "flesh" or braided my hair so that my head twitched and my eyes bulged as if I was having a seizure.

And the ear cleaning! I lay with my cheek on my mother's hard knees, she put the match, wrapped tightly in absorbent cotton, into my ear, and the torture began, which I still remember with a shudder. My eyes and nose watered. With tears streaming down my face, I endured this torture as long as I could, but when the match went deeper and tried to pierce the eardrum, I always broke out of my mother's clinging embrace and did not allow her to touch me again for months.

As a result, a wax plug formed in my ear and I was taken to the hospital.

I was five years old and had no idea what they were going to do to me. I hoped they wouldn't give me any shots!

After examining me, the doctor told me to sit on the couch. I looked him in the eye and asked if he was going to give me an injection. The doctor smiled and assured me that he definitely would not. But then a nurse appeared from behind the screen. She was holding a large glass syringe.

When I saw this, I jumped up from the couch and screamed, so that immediately, as if on command, there was a loud roar outside the door - my screams frightened all the little patients.

The doctor and the nurse tried to shame me by telling me to be quiet, but to no avail.

I screamed like mad until it was explained to me that this syringe was not for injections in the buttocks, but for washing the ear. "Look, there's not even a needle!"

The absence of a needle did indeed calm me. And the children crying at the door stopped immediately. The nurse rinsed my ear with warm water and let me out of the ENT office with visible relief.

Needles and Threads

Daddy pricked himself again. This time with a needle that had fallen out of the needle holder.

He spun around, hobbled to the sofa, and pulled it out of his heel.

And again, barely containing my laughter, I watched my "iron" father. I sneaked over to the needle box, took out the biggest, thickest needle, and stuck it in the carpet in the hallway. When Daddy goes into the kitchen for tea, he will surely step on it. I wait in anticipation of the comedy. But Daddy is delayed somewhere.

When my patience ran out, I began to have fun - running, jumping, spinning around the room, and during this exciting activity I completely forgot about the needle.

I jumped up on the sofa, from there I jumped out into the hallway as if from a springboard, and only while jumping did I realize that I was going to land right on the tip of the needle.

I was saved from disaster by the fact that I managed to turn at the last moment and did not put all my weight on the needle, it did not go all the way into me, its end stuck out.

When I reached the sofa, I carefully pulled it out of my heel.

There was no blood, no pain - nothing, just frustration with myself - I deserved it!

And also a great sense of guilt towards my father - the proverb is true: He who digs a pit for others may fall into it himself.

It was strange, I got more abuse from my mother, but I took revenge on my father, who treated me kinder and gentler and certainly did not deserve such rough treatment.

I would secretly hurt him, watch him with my glee, and then repent and punish myself. I treated younger boys the same way.

Once, in the kindergarten, we were offered to take over the sponsorship of the kindergarten group.

Each of us could choose a child to take care of - to play with him, to dress him before going out for a walk, to read him fairy tales. I chose two-year-old Roma. Besides, I did not take care of him so much as I scolded him when he misbehaved. I deliberately left him alone, told him to sit quietly on the bench, hid and watched what he would do.

Roma, of course, was bored sitting alone while his friends were making sand puppets, so he would slowly slip off the bench and stomp over to the sandbox.

I would jump out of my hiding place, give him a good smack on the bottom and say:

- You naughty boy! What did I tell you? Go back to your place!

Roma would snort, but he would not dare disobey me and would obediently climb onto the bench.

I treated my cousin Sasha the same way.

He was four years younger, and every time he came to visit us in the summer from Shevchenko, I gave him hell. As a punishment, I would strip him naked, drive him to the bathroom and pour cold water from the shower over him.

Sasha whimpered, but he tolerated it and fulfilled all my whims and orders.

In fact, I enjoyed torturing myself as well. I remember there was a boy in our school who was the color of an eggplant. He was not a black boy, but his skin, his hands, and his face had an unnatural purple color. It was as if someone had tied a string around him from top to bottom - if you ever foolishly twisted a string around your finger and cut off the blood supply to it, you must have seen your finger instantly turn blue. Sometimes I had wrapped the string around my fingers to the point of pain, trying to feel what he felt.

The purple boy didn't study at our school for long. One day he just disappeared. Probably died of torture, I thought with childish naivety. And it was only many years later that I realized that "Black Boy" was not tortured, not tortured in the dungeon, bound from head to toe with ropes and threads.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

He died of a serious heart defect.

Tested on myself

Dad often recalled how, as a schoolboy, he used to strangle himself by pinching his carotid artery with his finger or squeezing his neck with a pioneer scarf until he dropped dead.

Despite the fact that his friends had a hard time bringing him to his senses when he fainted, Misha liked this dangerous game of being "dead" and then being "resurrected".

Oh, this childish desire to experience everything! Touch the boiling teapot, hold your breath under water as long as you have enough air, hang upside down until your head is like cast iron and your eyes are bloodshot.

I liked to tie a scarf around my eyes and try to find out what it was like to be blind - walking around the house, knocking over chairs, bumping into corners, doorjambs, and objects. I also put absorbent cotton in my ears and pretended to be deaf and dumb, communicating with my family through notes and gestures.

But while my father and sister were sympathetic to my eccentricities, my mother was very upset by them. She was afraid that I would get into real trouble and actually become a cripple.

Once, with my legs tucked under me, I rolled around the house on a wooden abacus as if in a wheelchair, imitating our neighbor, Uncle Volodya, who had been hit by a locomotive when he was drunk.

My mother felt sick at the sight of me. She shouted, "If I see you again, I'll rip your head off!" Then she grabbed the abacus and threw it out the window with such disgust, as if it were contagious.

But I just wanted to know what it was like to live without legs.

Elvira's flight

Newcomers, a man, a woman and their five-year-old daughter, moved into Grandma Luda's house. Elvira and I were in the same kindergarten class. She was an ordinary girl: quick-witted, black-haired.

But when Elvira was six years old, an incredible story happened to her.

Her parents were out that day. Elvira went out on the balcony, leaned over the railing, and saw that downstairs, near the flower bed, there were big guys swarming.

- Hey, what are you doing? - asked a curious girl.

- What do you care? - They stuck their heads up. - If you want to know, jump down! We'll catch you!

The boys were obviously joking. They didn't want to catch anyone. Besides, they didn't think the girl would jump at all. But Elvira did, even though she lived on the eighth floor!

The boys were not expecting such a turn, so they ran away and Elvira landed safely on the flower bed. Surprisingly, she didn't even break any bones.

She got off lightly - with a ruptured spleen. But since the spleen was not considered a vital organ in those days, the doctors sent Elvira home soon after the operation, taking her word that she would not jump off the balcony again.

Elvira's flight became a real sensation in my grandmother's courtyard.

People even came from the neighboring streets to see the living legend.

The heroine herself walked around the yard with her nose proudly upturned, accepting the girls' offers of friendship with condescension and favor. Everyone wanted to be friends with Elvira.

Her fame hurt me so much that it literally drove me crazy.

What did Elvira do to become a star so quickly? Jump off a balcony and survive? What's the big deal? I could easily do the same jump. I could even jump off a 14-story building if I had to...

To prove it, I took my girlfriends to the attic of a neighboring high-rise.

We climbed out onto the roof, crawled carefully to the brick ledge, and peered into the abyss.

From here, the courtyard looked like a toy. Clouds hovered above us, just a hand's reach away, and little men the size of ants scurried about below. I looked down at the wall and felt sick to my stomach to the point of dizziness.

- Is this too much for you? - The girls teased me, holding my hands tightly to either side of my face, wondering if I was really going to jump.

I nodded silently. I guess the fourteenth floor was indeed too much...

Op-la!

But the thought of overtaking Elvira never left me.

I often imagined that Grandma Luda's apartment was on fire, there was nowhere to run, and I was on the balcony.

The awning would stretch out below me, and firemen in helmets would wave at me: "Jump! Hurry up!"

I climbed up the balcony railing, and under the admiring eyes of the crowd I dove down - right into the middle of the circle of tarpaulins. Op-la! everyone would shout and rush to embrace me.

To hell with the tarp! I'll just land in the same flower bed. So what if it's the eleventh floor, it's nothing!

While my grandmother was cooking dinner in the kitchen, I climbed onto the trunk that stood on the balcony and threw my leg over the railing. Holding on to the railing with my hands, I felt a rough ledge on the concrete slab with my foot and looked around. Mamma mia! The earth no longer seemed so friendly and close to me. Directly below me I could see a gray entrance canopy.

I was suddenly afraid to breathe: it was all true! One clumsy movement and I would fall and break. I'd be lying in a pool of blood with my head split open like a watermelon.

I visualized this image so clearly that a little shiver ran through my body. My arms and legs became treacherously weak. After gathering my strength, I managed to get back to the balcony and squatted in a daze for a minute, coming to my senses.

It was a good thing Grandma Luda hadn't seen me!

That evening, while we were having tea on the balcony, I asked her carefully:

- Granny, what would happen if I fell from a great height?

- You would be shattered, that's all," my grandmother replied calmly.

- What about Elvira? - I began, but Grandma Luda interrupted me:

- Your Elvira is stupid! It's a good thing she fell on the flower bed, or she'd be feeding worms right now.

She looked at me strangely. Does my grandmother know everything about me?

- It is foolish to envy fools! - she repeated. - Today they are lucky, tomorrow not. Always think with your own head. How many people do you know who are as lucky as Elvira?

I remembered the stranger from the high-rise across the street. She lived on the last - fourteenth floor, and that spring day, while washing the frames, she tripped over a basin of water and fell out of the window. She was dead.

My father saw it by chance and often remembered it, adding that he had often had a similar dream in which he was going off a steep cliff, but instead of falling, he had flown up like a bird.

For some reason, even then it seemed to me that one day my father's dream would come true...

It's your own fault

Before my grandfather Slava died, a black cat appeared in his apartment out of nowhere. Grandpa didn't pay much attention to it: a cat is just a cat. Maybe it jumped from the neighbor's balcony or slipped through the open door. Where else could it have come from?

But when my grandmother saw the cat, she became very alarmed:

- This is a bad sign! Big trouble ahead.

And she was right. A month later, Grandpa was gone. Cancer.

Grandpa had never been sick, but suddenly he began to complain about his stomach. He drank suspensions and powders for ulcers. My grandmother grumbled and thought that my grandfather was sick because he liked to eat fried meat.

She was angry with him, and when my grandfather was in pain, she would leave the house so as not to hear the moaning, saying, "Let him cry out as much as he wants, nothing can be done, it's his own fault".

It was not the custom in our family to feel sorry for each other. Every illness was seen as a simulation, every mistake as a deliberate harm. And it wasn't just about health. As soon as I or Tanya lost a key to the house, or got a dirty jacket, or got a C in algebra, my mother would lament: "Why is it that everyone else's kids are good, but mine are a punishment to me?"

When I was in first grade, my classmate Pasha Petrov threw a stone at my head.

I wasn't afraid of a possible hole in my skull, not of blood, but of being taken to the hospital and having my head shaved before being stitched up. The hair is nothing, it will grow back, but I was afraid that my mother would find out what had happened. I knew beforehand that she would say: "It's your own fault!"

And it's true - why did I tease Petrov?

As soon as my friends realized that I would never show my parents with a broken head, they dragged me home to the bully. Pasha's mother opened the door.

- Do you see what your son has done? - shouted the girls from the threshold. - Natasha is bleeding!"

Pasha's mother took me by the shoulders and led me to the window. A quick examination of my head showed that fortunately there was no hole in my skull-the stone had only scratched the skin at the back of my head, leaving a small abrasion. Pasha's mother treated my wound with hydrogen peroxide, anointed it with iodine, and promised to have a serious talk with her son, who had been hiding from us in the kitchen all this time. My parents never found out about the incident.

Scar

In winter, my friends and I used to play snowball in the yard.

In my excitement, I would jump off the stone railing into the snowdrift, get up and run away. It was only after half an hour that I noticed that my leg was somehow hot.

I took off my mitten and touched my pant leg - something wet and sticky. Blood!

There was a huge hole in the leggings below my knee.

Damn, I thought angrily, I've torn a new one. I have to sew it up discreetly so my mom doesn't notice. Otherwise she'll yell at me - oh, not again!

I sprinted home and snuck into the bathroom. I thought I'd wash my leggings first and then deal with the wound. But I was in for an unpleasant surprise: the wound on my leg was more serious than I thought. I must have hit some sharp iron when I jumped, and it had cut my leg almost to the bone, with something white like oatmeal showing through the torn edges.

I felt sick. And scared. I turned on the water so no one would hear my stifled sobs, pulled out the first-aid kit, and poured half a vial of Brilliant Green on the wound.

My knee burned like fire and blood gushed out. I tried to stop it by pulling the skin, pressing the wound with the palm of my hand, using many bandages and absorbent cotton.

Finally, after wrapping my leg in a rag, I hurried to bed.

For a month I secretly practiced self-medication, my leg hurt and healed badly, but I did not allow anyone to know about it.

The memory of that incident left me with a scar under my knee in the shape of a crooked smile.

My mother was horrified when she saw it, she yelled that if I hadn't kept quiet, the surgeon at the hospital would have stitched my leg up nicely, but now I have such an ugly scar for the rest of my life. Besides, I could have gotten blood poisoning, gangrene, they could have even cut off my leg.

Yes, they could have. But I wasn't thinking about that, I was thinking about how to avoid punishment for tearing my leggings.

To be continued