Because today I don’t feel too brisk, I thought I should remember a part of the memorable parts of my life so far. Today I decided to write about some of the less flattering stances in which I have been, not the other, but if no one likes to describe themselves in embarrassing situations, Fiat Lux!, right?
- By fifth grade, I don’t know what strange Gods pushed me one evening to play with a wide mouth glass, like those in which milk was delivered in the morning, in the communist era. The kind with aluminum foil as stopper. I liked to blow into it, to dream myself a “pandean pipe” artist. Or, the opposite, to screw it to the mouth and try to remove all the air from it. Well, on the same direction of the party “heeeeeeave-hooooo”ish, I suck, and suck, and again suuuuck, to make sure nothing is left, what the hell, is that all we can? Finally, satisfied with my Herculean forces in.. sucking, I sought of my own business, of homework, of sleep, of breakfast, of walking to the bathroom for arranging myself for going to school purposes, for… Whoaaaaaa! Stop! I look in the mirror with a mug of eternally scalded, with an eye flashing worse than a faulty neon. I rub my eyes, maybe I didn’t see well! All around my upper lip was a splendid red circle. The effects of vacuuming the bottle the evening before – some broken capillaries, absolutely superb. Instantly, my knees soften. How the hell can you go to school that way, with red mustache under nose?! For three days, the time it took to transform myself from the infant Freddie Mercury back to russian lady, I walked like ostriches, with my head bowed and buried. My colleagues laughed, the teachers were laughing too, I was also laughing, with my teeth kinda set on edge… After I fret my tongue explaining on and on what and how it happened, I was kind of cursing my misfortune of not being born Muslim, to wear a veil. So, no more bottles! :)
- When I was even more younger I was a bad pyromaniac. I was 5-6 years old, I think, and I was at the country side, at my grandmother. It was the time when the peasants were finishing ripping the harvests, there have been a few rainy and chilly days and I was wearing a pair of blue small rain boots, made of rubber. My mama and my grandmother, serious housewives, were struggling to make a stack of wheat straws in the back garden, and I, with my mind in the corners (I was promising since my youth!), don’t know what in the Heaven’s name get a “genius” idea, grabbed a box of matches and went to the place where there were stored for winter all sorts of combustible materials (woods, kindling, corn-combs, etc), to “heat” myself up a bit. I mean, that was the official explanation, justification. The other explanation, the true one, was that I loved to play with fire. So, I set fire on a dry leaflet of corn-comb, specifying that the leaf was still attached to the dried plant, which was in the middle of a pile of other dried plants from the same category. When the fire spread to other leaflets … oops! I’m “burned”! Confident, in my childish mind, that I’m on top of it, and panicked that my mother and the rest will find out, I jump into the flames, trying to extinguish them with my rubber boots (mein Goth!). My luck was that my grandmother saw the thick smoke that was rising more and more, she jumped more something like a top athlete directly from the top of the stack, and came with a rabid snail speed to snatch me from the flames. What followed… kinda hard to explain. I, penitent, wringing my fingers in despair and weeping like at a funeral, the neighbors who were running like crazy with buckets in their hands, the women screaming and wailing, etc. It does not help to say that the annex was directly near the big house, where we lived, right? The “fun” ended late at night, with torches through the attic, in search of sparks and embers. Luckily, the damage was not very big, and my little boots have proved more heat-resistant than previously thought. These days, 20-some years more mature, I still see the semi-charred beams, and I recollect nostalgically. And I feel like laughing, although it wouldn’t be something to laugh about… (yes, I got rid of my fire obsession, relax :))
- Still at the country, still young (I think around 7 years old), still with mama and grandmother. Plus one piece father and one piece sister. The grapes had been ripening, the stum had been made, wine had already been made too. Mother and grandmother were separating the clear wine from the muddy, unsettled one, with yeast, which they were giving to me to throw away. I never had a particular passion for drinks, but I do not know what came over me then to drink from the wine I was carrying. Perhaps I was still associating it with stum? :) All that was certain was that I was returning every round more and more cheerful. When they realized that I was actually tipsy, groggy for good, they placed their hands on the their heads. They didn’t know where to put their hands (they were already on their heads) when they found out that instead of throwing the yeast in the back of the garden, where the trash was, for laziness or more and more weakened knees reasons :)) I threw almost half of it in the yard, to the chickens. All, very, very, pleased! The hens, I mean. I only remember that I was not very affected by the too sudden agitation of the birds in the yard, I was sitting in the corner of the house and I was tasting from the goodness of Bacchus, until my folks found me…
- have you ever confused the black pearls of mandrake with blueberries? Me and my sister did. :)) How silly to be to eat mandrake? Perhaps that’s why I’m so rabid, perhaps that’s why my sister is even more rabid than me (she might have eaten more, cause she was greedier). This deed was happening on the hills off Botoșani, on vacation to grandma. Obviously, still a troubled kids age, 5-6 years old, I think. We were walking with Mom and Dad on the shore of the river Jijia, and we were admiring the wild beauty of nature, with all kinds of fruits at every pace, each more colorful than the others, more smiling, more enticing. Some of them were even winking to us, (at least those big bushes of mandrake, so glittery, them be damned!). When dad found us gobbling ourselves with “blackberry”, his face turned white, as tanned as he was! I think it was quite obvious that we … “feasted”, since we were purple-blue all around the lips, right? I have no idea how much I ate, if I managed to swallow them, or if I was sick. I only know that the mandrake berries taste sweet. :)
- I was going with Tasha to buy thick laces, the green-fluorescent kind (aka “neon” – fluorescent lamps) in the Grand Square. I mention that the Grand Square of Brăila is a market that I hate with all my heart. It’s about the only market in the city where at every step you are being asked by the sellers „what do you want to buy”? You must hang a placard by your neck that says in big bold letters: “I DO NOT BUY ANYTHING, I’M ONLY LOOKING AROUND, GOD DAMN IT!”, so you don’t fret your tongue. When I, unfortunately, have to enter the Grand Square, I walk looking in the ground, like ostriches. I do not look left-right-up-down-forward-backward. If you’ve looked, they’re capable of taking you by force, tie you to a chair and make you sample all sorts of sneakers, shoes, etc, although you explain in a rush that you do not want, you don’t buy, and so on. When they finally convince themselves that you really don’t want to buy anything, they are capable of beating you up, “How, miss, why did you sample merchandise if you don’t buy?!” LOL! So, going back on the subject… we enter the Grand Square, me with my head bowed, Tasha, more courageous, frolicking from stand to stand. Both on roller-skates. I don’t know how The-One-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named sticks his curly tail, but I feel at some point how Tasha hitches my hand and clings to a board full of sunglasses. I lost my balance, and found myself tested at the mobility chapter, with a splendid split. If Nadia Comăneci would have seen me, she would have shuddered, poor girl… Clearly, any attempt to distort the reality show was tardily. I was already hearing somewhere in the back some “colored” snobs “haha”ing mockingly: “Go to hell! How she went like crazy!” But they were delicate… in their place, I would have laughed like a junkie hyena! When the earth stops under me, I gather my shards and stand up like a spring, I put a smile of “It happens every day… a trifle” to the others, I shake the dust, and try to go to Tasha, to check her up. In which moment I lay myself on the ground again. The plastic of one of my rollers had snapped and stuck under a pallet that sat there like a treacherous it was, waiting to give me the coup de grace. I get up a second time, I call on the already in pain grin “Everything is under control! I’m fine, I’m fine!”, I loose the plastic from under the pallet, noticing excited and happy as I’ve ever been before that the support of which the wheels are attached was woefully hanging. Avoiding eye contact at maximum, I take Tasha’s hand and try to disappear, limping on the still good roller. Obviously, I hear a creaking voice from behind, how could it be any other way? “Hellooo! Operator! Who gets up the glasses?!”. We go back, we arrange the stand back and rehearse the scene of limping. Only me, she has no visible corporal or materials injuries… last half of the road, sick of hopping, I take off my rollers, delicate like a lady, and walk in my socks alone. Do not tell anyone that I came from the city wearing just the socks! :)
I don’t mind you sharing in the comments some of the embarrassing situations in which you were placed. Courage! ;)
Șoapte...
Tags: awkward situations, games with people, memories, old and new people, scraps of thoughts, youth without old age
