She's Not Interested in Anything

Every parent hopes that their child will succeed where they failed for any number of reasons. My mother wanted to be an artist. That's why she was so bitter when she saw the gouache drying in the jars and covered with dust squirrel brushes.

- Why don't you paint? - she would ask me.

- I don't want to.

- What do you want to do?

- I don't know.

- Look at her," my mother would complain to my father. - She's not interested in anything!

Mom was right and wrong. I was very quick to get excited about an idea, enthusiastic about new things, but just as quick to cool down. The one exception was reading.

I read nonstop. Don't touch me when I'm reading a fascinating book.

- Go buy some bread! - Mom calls from the kitchen.

I turn the page to get to the end of the chapter because I want to know what happens next.

- Do I have to tell you twice?

- Wait a minute, please! - I beg, almost pleading.

- I told you already! Well, now!

I'm starting to boil inside, but I hear my father standing up for me:

- Leave her alone. She'll finish reading and then she'll go.

I am grateful to my father, but my mother is getting angry. She thinks that at the first call I should drop everything and do what the adults tell me to do.

Finally, after reading half a page, I run to the store, slamming the door loudly. And then my mother and I spend the whole evening "playing silence," sulking at each other.

The Queen of Sports

My father was a promising athlete, he was involved in athletics. He had many sports diplomas and awards in his youth. Short and long distance running, long jump, shot put - my father was the first in everything, he took the prize places.

With his physical data and perfect health, he could easily become a world champion. But he didn't. He retired from big sports. I thought he had some kind of conflict with his coach - the explosive temperament plus the monstrous ego of my father played a bad joke on him more than once. Dad can not say a word against, otherwise he will bristle like a hedgehog and immediately go into the fight. Make the mess, but how to correct the situation does not know, does not want to retreat. Too proud.

But it turned out that the coach idolized my father, he was even willing to arrange a coaching job for him, so that my father was not taken into the army. Dad refused, he wanted to serve. And in the army, where he had never drank before, he became addicted to alcohol, and sports became secondary to him.

My father hoped to pass on his unrealized athletic potential to his son.

But instead of a boy, I was born. And he began to raise me Spartanly. When I was four, he bought me an aluminum hula hoop.

But I could not twist the hula hoop by bending gracefully - the hoop would slip and clatter to the floor. Then my dad started setting it upright and holding it with his hand on top. Resting on my dad's torso, I did somersaults on the hoop, swinging, hanging upside down.

"Can you do that?" - Dad would lie down and demonstrate a few push-ups. I repeated. "Can you do it on your fists?" "Can you do it with claps?" "Can you do a pistol squat?"

I can. I did pullovers, push-ups, and chin-ups on the hula hoop that served as my horizontal bar. Working out was easy for me, it was like a fun game.

In the Track and Field building, where my father took me, everything went well at first.

I ran fast and jumped high. I liked to win, to feel my superiority. But it became harder and harder to win.

You could be a great sprinter, but a poor steyer, and the section was full of guys who could run long distances much better than I could. To get to their level, you had to train hard and persistently, but I was too lazy. I wanted to be like Julius Caesar: "Veni, vidi, vici." I could run 30, 60, 100 meters without any preparation, even without warming up - in one breath, to win applause, to get my diploma or prize, but where it was necessary to make extra effort, I - passed.

Multi-kilometer runs are torture for me. As a rule, I slack off, indulge myself, shorten the laps.

And soon the diplomas and medals go to other guys.

I get angry - at my competitors, at my coach, at myself. I start skipping training, and then I give up completely. There's a scandal at home. My father is disappointed, but I don't care. Physical education is one thing, professional sports is another. I'll never be a champion, I'm too undisciplined. Running is not my thing. And what kind of athlete am I? My legs are too short. Maybe I should take up martial arts?

Bruce Lee

Everyone in our yard had nicknames - Fly, Eternal, Kasya-Masya, Irka Scabby, Siskin. My name was Bruce Lee. To be honest, at that time I had no idea what it meant and why grown-up boys who strummed their guitars under my window looked at me with such admiration.

In the 90s everyone was obsessed with martial arts and karate. That's how I found out where the yard gang's love for me came from.

According to the boys, I was a copy of Bruce Lee. They saw their idol in my face, and of course they idolized that image.

It seemed to them that if I looked like the legendary movie actor, then I also had the ability to "fight" in my blood.

Yes, I was an athletic girl, and at my father's suggestion I used to pound the polished armrest of a chair with the edge of my palm every day so that I could hammer nails into the board with my bare hand in front of my astonished friends. But I never really knew how to fight.

Once at school, I had a confrontation with a guy from a parallel class.

Bigguy (that was his name) pushed me with his shoulder during school break and I couldn't help myself and pushed him back. Bigguy was surprised and made an appointment for me after class because he had decided to teach me a lesson.

The whole school gathered to watch us fight.

Of course, I waited for the inevitable embarrassment - my opponent was twice my size and a head taller than me. But it was too late to retreat, and there was nowhere to retreat to - Bigguy stood across from me, grinning and rolling up his shirt sleeves. Unlike me, he didn't doubt himself one bit.

He jumped up and threw his right leg forward like in a movie, aiming right at my head. I ducked involuntarily. The foot, not hitting the obstacle, whistled past. Then the unexpected happened. Bigguy slipped and, having lost his balance, fell to the wet asphalt. The boys laughed. They thought it was some clever move on my part, some secret karate technique. Aikido.

My opponent also did not immediately understand why he suddenly found himself in a puddle. Slowly, without taking his eyes off me, he stood up and shook off his dirty pants. He looked gloomy and did not bode well for me. The end! - I thought. But then one of the boys came over and whispered something to Bigguy. With a snarl of his teeth, Bigguy spat and walked out of the courtyard with a deadly look at me. His suite followed him.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Later, I found out that the boy had scared the bully with my mythical martial arts skills, saying, "Don't mess with her, or she'll beat you up! After all, she is Bruce Lee, a karate fighter....

So I had to sign up for the self-defense class, just in case, or what the hell - it's time to finally live up to the movie image.

I thought that from the very first class we would be taught self-defense techniques, all kinds of grabs, punches and throws, but instead the instructor had us running around the gym and pulling our ligaments on the mats.

For a month, all we did was pump abs, do push-ups on our fists, and learn how to fall properly. And then they made me a real kimono.

I twirled in front of the mirror, took a fighting stance with a menacing cry of "ki-ya!" and decided I had had enough. Why train, sweat for hours in the gym, when after the rumors of how I "beat" Bigguy, even the worst bullies in our neighborhood and those who tried to avoid me.

Two of a kind

I can't help myself. I take on one thing or another with passion, but the result of my flailing is always the same - the fire goes out and I give up the tiresome occupation.

It's the same with people. I have almost no friends. I do not know how to behave with them, what to talk about, I quickly get bored with them. What is interesting for them rarely resonates in my soul, and what I like is not always understandable to others. In this I am like my parents, especially my dad. Mom says that he and I are two of a kind.

My father was an eager man, always inventing, trying something new, looking for things. He collected books, records, badges, figurines of bears (his name was Misha - Bear in English). He subscribed to many newspapers and magazines, cut out articles he liked and put them neatly in folders. He copied Vladimir Vysotsky's poems into a notebook, mended shoes, wove macramé, knitted.

He built a three-story house in our dacha with his own hands, grew seedlings himself.

Dad even grew lemon trees at home, which he brought from Tagil, from my grandmother Dusya. He took care of them and watered them. When there were aphids on the leaves, he carefully wiped each leaf with a soapy solution and harvested large, fragrant fruits all year round.

Another hobby of my father's was photography. It is said that people like him are masters of their craft.

And it was true.

Once my father brought back a broken clock from Tagil. It was a clock that struck hours.

No watchmaker could fix it, but my father did. It chimed every half hour, day after day, for many years, and stopped on its own the night my father died. After that, the clock never told the right time, it would slow down, or run ahead, or suddenly start chiming randomly in the middle of the night - long, rumbling, sad. I had to get rid of it.

In moments of enthusiasm, when things went well, Dad was happier than ever.

But when something went wrong and his expectations were not met, when someone criticized Dad's work, or when he himself lost interest or confidence in himself, in his abilities - everything went downhill. And he knew only one cure for stress - alcohol.

Once, in the early nineties, my father brought home a pile of typewritten pages - a copy of Lazarev's book "Diagnosis of Karma".

I swallowed it in one sitting. The book amazed and frightened me: how frightening it is to live! I wanted to read something else on this subject. The society of "Rerikhs" was gaining popularity in the city.

So we went to their meeting with my father and his colleague Tatiana, who, seeing my interest in esotericism, filled my father with relevant clippings from magazines and newspapers.

There were many people in the hall, mostly intellectuals and youth seekers.

Cosmic music was playing, the lecturer was talking about Agni Yoga and the laws of karma.

I was fascinated by the teachings. Unlike my father, who fell asleep on the very first day, I started attending the "Living Ethics" meetings regularly. I memorized the lectures, wrote them down, and then came home and told my father, who listened to me very attentively.

Tatiana, the same colleague who gave me esoteric readings, whispered in confidence that my father found me an interesting conversationalist. It was as if he had confessed to her that I was the only person in the family with whom he could talk about "such things" and vent his feelings. I was so happy to hear that!

Honor your father

Daddy knows how to handle children. He may not have been a very good husband, but I could hardly imagine a better father for me. Daddy devoted all his free time to me: he played games with me, read me fairy tales, and taught me songs and poems. But in return, he demanded the same love and devotion from me. As soon as my father doubted me, suspected that I was acting in concert with my mother, he would sneer contemptuously: "Oh, you! Betrayer Pavlik Morozov!"

- Dad, read me about Koska the rabbit,' I ask, holding out a book with my favorite fairy tale.

- You better honor your father! - Dad answers vaguely.

- What can I do to honor you? - I laugh. - I have nothing.

- You would just pick up a dictionary and find out what it means.

I could read (Dad taught me when I was three and a half), so I take the thick dictionary off the shelf and read: to honor - to respect, to obey elders.

- Now do you understand? - Dad hums contentedly. - So where's your book? Give it here.

Rubik's Cube

In times of total shortage in our country, my father somehow managed to get his hands on a Rubik's Cube, and a nightmare began in our house.

Dad spent days puzzling over it. He turned it this way and that, puffed and panted, smoked nervously in the toilet, but he could not solve it.

I, after turning the puzzle in my hands, came to the conclusion that it made no sense at all.

- It's impossible to solve a Rubik's Cube! - I declared, which made my father furious.

- No, it is possible! - he shouted. - And I'll prove it! I'll do it!

I watched my father's complicated manipulations over my shoulder, trying to find some logic in his actions. But in my opinion, there wasn't any, and there couldn't be any.

My father would leave the unsolved cube on the table at night so that he could take it to work in the morning and continue. And so, to see if my father really understood what he was doing or was just pretending to be clever, I secretly began peeling off the colored squares every night and gluing them together at random.

I don't know how my dad didn't go crazy. Imagine going to bed with one combination in your mind and waking up with a completely different cube. My dad even lost weight:

- What the hell is going on?

After a month I couldn't take it anymore and told him everything. It was a big scandal!

But after my heartfelt confession, my father kept a special notebook in which he wrote down all his steps. And later he brought home a bad photocopy of "Science and Life" magazine with clues. I think the day Dad finally solved the intricate puzzle, he was the happiest man in the world. He'd finally done it, he'd beaten the Rubik's Cube.

Late Movie

I'm six years old. My parents are going to see a late movie at the "Liberty" theater.

I ask to go with them, but they won't take me - Tanya is small, someone should sit with her. Everything inside me is boiling with resentment: Why me? You gave birth to her, you should take care of her!

- Shut up! - threatens my mother, touching her lips with lipstick in front of the mirror.

They put my sister to bed and punished me by putting me in the corner, where I came out as soon as the door slammed behind my parents. There's a note on the mirror. It says in block letters, written in Dad's hand, that I should be in bed when the big hand on the clock is at twelve and the little hand is at nine.

No way! - I think gloatingly.

I grabbed a pencil and scribbled on the note everything I thought about the father who had so treacherously abandoned his daughter. I wrote that I didn't give a damn about his orders, that I wouldn't sleep, and that I wouldn't stand in the corner. And in general, you're a fool, Daddy, for going to the movies without me. I'll never forgive you!

As a sign of protest, I decide to go outside. What's the big deal, I'll walk around the house once and then go back inside. No one will know anyway.

But it was a bit scary to go out alone at such a late hour. So I woke up my sleepy little sister and dragged her out into the yard.

Imagine my horror when I came back five minutes later, opened the door with my key, and saw the light on in the hallway. I remembered very well that I had turned it off.

It turned out that the theater had canceled the movie.

The horror was not even that my parents had suddenly come home, but that my father was holding a note with my cheeky scribbles on it. I was so screwed! Dad was most offended that I called him a fool. He chased me around the apartment with a belt, shouting that he would not tolerate insults from a little brat like me, who was knee-high to a grasshopper, but there - teach her father!

As for me, I felt no guilt, and the only thing I regretted was not destroying the evidence right away. I would have torn up the note and that would have been the end of it, I wouldn't have gotten the belt on my ass.

I'll be smarter next time.

Bad Girl

I'm not much of a conspirator.

I wish I could trust my parents more, tell them everything that is going on in my soul, but that only causes trouble.

I remember one incident: my mother and I were sitting at the window, I'm five years old. A group of boys, about ten or twelve years old, were racing down the street on bicycles. One of them, white-haired with a red cap, I think I recognized, and as if by chance, I said out loud:

- I bet he is bragging to the boys about how he tricked me and Zhenya Vershinin, lied to us, and lured us to the construction site.

- What construction site? - My mother is alarmed.

- What were you doing there?

- We were taking a walk," I gullibly told her. - And the white-haired guy deceived us, saying that a kitten had fallen into the pit. Zhenya and I ran to save it, and there were other guys who told us to take off our pants.

- And did you? - Mom raised her eyebrows. - Answer me right now!

- No, - I waved my hand nonchalantly. - I was scared, but Zhenya pushed them back and we ran away. And the guy in the cap is probably bragging now. Poor liar!

I'm waiting for my mother to praise me, to tell me what a good job we've done fooling a big guys. But instead, my mother drops the chair with a clatter, pulls the belt out of her robe, and starts whipping me with it, saying through clenched teeth:

- Shit! I'll show you how to go to the construction site! I'll show you! Go to bed!

I break free and hide in fear in the bathroom. I'm sobbing: Why did she do this to me?

To be continued