Old School

It’s gonna be a long story, but I feel like I NEED to let it out. You’ll be a hero if you read it up to the end )))

Once I was surfing one special site for Russians where they can meet their classmates and old friends who may now live in other parts of the country or the world. It’s a great place to meet your old acquaintances and recollect some moments of your childhood. There was a group on the site which caught my attention, “Old School 90s”. The people who gather there, are my age or a bit older who chanced to have had their childhood in the 90s. We were discussing all sorts of old stuff which made up our childhood years, and it made me sink into my childhood once again.

I know we all had the same and thus different childhood, ‘coz our geographies differ and cultures differ, too. And different things made us happy. My childhood years are related to the end of the 80s and the 90s, the period when Russia experienced a huge shift from the Soviet regime to what is now called ‘democracy’ (though I certainly argue it). It was the time when we suddenly started to get all that weird and fascinating (fascinating, ‘coz it was totally weird) Western stuff which we never had before.

I was 6 or 7 when that man from “Slave Isaura” perished in the fire. I remember how the whole Russia was weeping that evening. And I was eager to do everything my parents wanted from me, just to get a permission to watch “Santa Barbara” in the evening. And no one of us can forget how C.C. was lying in coma for more than a hundred series and then simply tore the oxygen mask off himself and rose from the dead :) My classmate even called her cat by the name of her favourite “Santa Barbara” hero – Mason :) Then years on my family used to gather in front of our old TV-set to watch “The Rich Also Cry” (with Veronica Castro starring), “Simply Maria”, >“Milagros” (on Russian TV it was called “Girl with the name of Fate” for some reason), “Perla Negra”, “Celesta” and all its sequels, “My Second Mama” and many more. This genre was totally new for us, and it was such a surprise to watch an “endless melodrama”. We seemed to follow the sufferings and doubts of the heroes, ‘coz we didn’t know what the end would be like. It’s now that I can watch the first series and predict the end which’s gonna occur in a year :). My Mom became a fan of Andrea del Boca, while I was dreaming of Gabriel Corrado and Osvaldo Laport! And YES – “Helen and the Guys” (a French TV series about students) – it was a real hit, a mania! Everybody was watching it, we discussed it at school, collected pictures and posters with Helen, Nicolas, Goanna, Christian, Jose, Sebastian and others. “Thunder in Paradise”, “Beverly Hills 90210” (I was crazy ‘bout Luke Perry!) - I can go on for ages :)

“Gammy Bears” was a discovery for us! We’ve never seen such colorful, bright, and well totally different cartoons. There was a time when we started neglecting our own culture under the pressure of loads of Western stuff, strongly prohibited before. We had to pass this phase. And we passed it. Now these things are viewed like everyday stuff and don’t astonish us any longer. We are returning to our own culture finally. But those days we all were singing “Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip and Dale rescue rangers, Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip and Dale where there’s danger” and “Can you feel the love tonight…” I think I was 10 when they showed “Lion King” on TV for the first time. There was a children program on our local TV channel “Gorodskoy Telekanal” (“City TV Channel” – now it has almost disappeared, and mainly broadcasts the programs of Moscow channel “CTC”) every Sunday when they told about some big Disney cartoon and broadcasted it after. All the viewers were suggested to take part in a contest with the prize if we gave the right answer to the question, “On which famous play is the cartoon based?” Mom guessed it in 10 min. I didn’t know “Hamlet” by that time, ‘coz we studied some English literature only when I was 12 or so. But Mom insisted that I should call and answer. I didn’t want to, ‘coz I was very shy at that time and was simply afraid to talk to that man in the TV set. She cried at me, and we quarreled. I don’t know why, but this episode never left my head years after. But I was fascinated by the cartoon, and it still remains one of my favourites, maybe the best one for me.

It was the time of first adverts to appear. It sounds silly, but those adverts were the best ones! That dancing camel from “Picnic” advert – he was just awesome! Or the advert with Suvorov (our famous general of the 18th century) sitting at the dinner table with the Emperor family and noble guests and the Emperor asking him, “Why don’t you start?” – “But it’s advent Father, we can’t start before the first star!” And yes, those funny chicken legs flying up and forming a line high up in the skies with the voice coming out, “It’s not cranes – it’s chicken legs flying”. It was my favourite. And sure the absolute hit of the 90s – “Everyone loves Mamba. And Seryozha also!”

Funny, but we were happy to drink those god-awful juices of powder – Zuko, Yuppii, and Invite (remember – “Inviiiiiiiiite, you just need to add some water!”). And everybody was collecting wrappers from “Love is…” (Bubble Gum of Love) you remember that chewing-gum? Oh God, how tasty it was! Why isn’t it sold anywhere now?? I LONG FOR TASTING IT ONE MORE TIME!!! I had hundreds of wrappers with all sorts of love definitions, and always wished to get that “Love is…” box, but I never had a chance. Then Kinder Surprises appeared, and we got hooked to them for several years. My first collection started with Lions. I remember how insatiable I used to be, and needed more, more figures, the whole collection. We used to bring our KS toys in parcels, dump them out during the break, and change one toy for the other which we lacked in our collection. Collapsible toys went 2 or 3 for 1 figure. Depending on the figure status. I have the whole collection of Lions, Dwarves, Penguins, oh who else was there? I remember I once stole a dwarf figure from my classmate. I needed this only dwarf in my collection, and Katya brought it to school with other KS toys. It was summer school camp after the 3rd grade. We went on an excursion by bus, and I was always holding this figure in my arms while we were sitting in the bus, and at first I didn’t intend to commit this ‘crime’, but Katya seemed to forget about the toy and I just took it home. I was afraid to look in her eyes the next day. I felt ashamed. But I never returned the toy. I knew Katya was then telling her friends that I had stolen her dwarf, but they didn’t believe her ‘coz I was a person of trust at school, and they even came up to me and told me that Katya was rumoring about me! I played like I surely was not guilty! Ah it’s the worst deed of my childhood… There were Crocodiles in KS, too, before Lions, and those KS were a rare thing in Russia. We somehow missed them. But some guys had crocodile figures in their collections, and it was a matter of definite pride. The KS mania started when I was 9. And I was almost 11 or 12 when tents appeared on one of the central squares with the figures of crocodiles and other KS specials at sell. This killed KS. We lost interest. Now everyone could simply buy any figure he wished to, without taking risks with a KS egg. WHY DID THEY KILL KS?? WHO ASKED THEM???

But we soon found a new collection object – stickers. It all started with “Barbie”. We bought sticker packs, each one contained 6 or 7 stickers and we didn’t know what stickers we were to get. We stuck them then into the special album with the space for this particular sticker. The aim was to fill the whole album with stickers. The more stickers you had in your collection the less chances you got to have all new stickers when buying a sticker pack. And again we exchanged stickers to finish the collection. I’ve got the whole “Barbie” album full. And in “Lion King” I miss only 1 – it’s such a pity! Then I had an “Animal World” and later “Helen and the Guys”. But at that time we were losing interest to this, and I think half of these albums are left unfinished. Those who had the “Barbie” album full could get a present from the company – a real Barbie! It was a dream, ‘coz we didn’t have many Barbies at that time in children stores. It’s now that you walk through the children store and see hundreds of Barbie and Ken dolls in all the possible dresses with all the furniture. We dreamt of it. I never had a Barbie. I’ve only got a Betsy, and a Cindy. And a Pamela - a nice teenage girl of the Barbie type, but twice shorter. One could find these toys in “Children World” in Moscow only, and the dream of every child living in the province was a visit of this big store and at least have a look at all those beautiful toys. Still I was happy to have these Barbie copies. I used to gather my dolls and come to my neighbour Lyuba where we played with both my and her dolls. There was also the time when small German baby dolls were popular. They were mostly sold two in a pack – all dressed in pink crawlers or dresses, mostly girl baby dolls. I had such a doll pair, and when Lyuba came to me, we took two old armchairs and designed them as 2-storey cottages. One for each doll. And then played the day of each girl. Sometimes they met and had a chat, sometimes their days never brought them together. We could spend hours playing this sort of game. We also loved to play “Monopoly” and “Manager” like everyone else – table games where we could buy this or that enterprise, sold and bought shares, got rich and went bankrupt, started from scratch. Lyuba had those games, and I came to her every evening to spend 3-4-more hours running the business of my dream :))

We didn’t have computers – we had Dendies and Segas. Sega was much cooler, and nearly everyone had a Dendy. When we visited someone’s Birthday party we most likely spent the after-dinner part playing Dendy connecting 4 to 6 joysticks to it. I still remember “Mario”, “Battle Toads”, “Contra” and “Chip and Dale” games. And the one which I adored “Felix Jerry”. I could chose a hero there – cat, bee and some unknown heroes, each possessing a special quality – and forward towards the end of the game. I never passed all the stages, but I was constantly practicing. Our stores were loaded with orange Dendy cartridges – in the same way as DVDs fill the video stores now. I remember Mom never let me connect my Dendy to a color TV-set in our living-room, and I used a small black-and-white TV-set for playing Dendy games which stood in my room. I always envied a bit my classmates who could play color Dendy games.

We also had Tamagotchis and Elektronikas. An Elektornika was a forerunner of Tetris. It generally showed time and functioned as an alarm-clock. But it never mattered anyone of us. What was important is that it had a game. Each Elektronika had its own game. In my game a “merry cook” (that was actually the name of the game) was tossing up sausages and catching them back with his pan. I scored records after hours spent in following the cook’s actions. Sometimes my parents started to shout at me, “Go and do your hometask instead of playing this stupid game!” “Yes, yes, Mom, I’m coming…” but I never did before I scored a new record. It’s funny, but I’m one of those rare persons whose Elektronika is still working. But I don’t play now, I simply use it as an additional alarm-clock (one is not enough to wake me up in the morning :) Tetris was the same, but had more games, and they were different. Snake, Tetris itself, others I don’t remember. My favourite was Snake. We can still play it in some mobiles. My Mom is crazy ‘bout it, and once spent 3 hours playing Snake in her mobile non-stop :) Parents bought me a Tamagotchi as a New Year’s present when I was 12. I was on top of the world! My tamagotchi was a panda. I never managed to grow him up till 100 years; I was a bad pet keeper. But I did my best, and every time he died again I promised I would treat him better next time :) It was impossible to sit at the lessons, because I was always thinking about him, how he was, maybe he was hungry or wanted to have a walk. The teachers were crazy about that, but they could not stop this mania :)

When I got older a cassette-recorder became my favourite toy. Zlata bought me a radio cassette player when I was 13. For over a year I was just listening to some favourite cassettes, winding the cassette to the needed place with a pencil or with a finger (our children will not understand this process already). “The Best From The West-1,2,3”, “E-Rotic”, “Filipp Kirkorov – I’m Not Rafael”, “Tatyana Ovsienko – Za rozovym morem”, “Ivanushki International – hmm… don’t remember the name of their very first album”. The 2 first items were extremely popular in the middle of the 90s. We all danced Macarena at the discos and waited till that handsome blond guy from the parallel class would invite us to dance a slow with him to “Even Though You Broke My Heart” or “Casablanca” or “Tuchi” (“Storm-clouds”). I first heard “E-Rotic” when I was in the summer camp. I used to be a total “home kid” in those days, who spent time with the family and my dear Granny (unfortunately she’s not here anymore) instead of walking with other kids in the street. That was why I didn’t know most of the music and movie tendencies and was a sort of “out-of-date”. In the summer camp I learnt a lot :) And used to sing the songs of “E-Rotic” until I got 14 or 15. Now when I listened to the songs of the album some months ago I was shocked about the text! Oh my God, if only I knew what I was singing!!! But when I was 11 I had no doubt that in “Dr. Dick” Dick was the name of the doctor who was somehow gonna help the female vocalist :))) At 14 I discovered that I could find radio stations on my radio cassette recorder. That was the beginning of my “education in modern music”. I could listen to the radio for hours recording my favourite songs of Hanson, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, N-Sync, Five, Ricky Martin and others. I started buying megapopular weekly magazines for teens of those days “COOL” and “COOL Girl”. It was 1997, spring, and we were cleaning the school yard. I have just watched “Titanic” and have completely fallen in love with Jack (or Leonardo?? no guess at that time I saw Jack in him, and Jack was my dream). And suddenly I saw a magazine lying on the porch with his picture on the front page! It belonged to one of my classmates, but I did not dare to ask her what sort of magazine it had been, ‘coz I used to be shy and diffident and was afraid that everybody would laugh at me because of my ignorance. However I took Granny out and went in search of this magazine. It was not hard to find, ‘coz it was everywhere. That was the first time I read a teen magazine. Since then I started buying “COOL” every week and learnt a lot of information about music and famous bands, actors, teen stuff, sex (yes, I learnt about sex through this magazine, ‘coz nobody ever told me about it among my relatives, and when I read the “love pages” in “COOL” for the first time I thought, “Woooooow…”). There was a great thing in each “COOL” – photo love story, one for several issues, like comics but about Russian teens and love. I could not miss an issue at least because of these photo love stories. I also loved to read the last page where fans were looking for other fans to have a mail correspondence (of course not e-mail, in those days we were wrote letters with a pen, as well as reports, essays and everything – just imagine a 20-pages report written with a pen! It took me a week to do it plus many hours in the library to find the information). I tried it several times but it actually did not lead to anything long-lasting.

We were talented. We composed verses. These masterpieces could be viewed all over the town – on the asphalt, walls, fences, windows (certainly somebody else’s). We constantly decorated the walls of our WCs with poetic and prosaic lines about all sorts of stuff – beginning with “Marina + Dima = Love” or “Igor is a nasty dirty f*cking freak” and ending with the teachers’ characterizations (usually of an evil kind). Vlada’s teacher of physics had the family name Kononov (when translated, “horse-like” or anyway it was derived from the word “horse”), sure he was given a nick Horse. I still remember a big line on her school wall, “Horse is goat” (“Kon’ – kozel”), “goat” here means a freaky person, somebody whom one strongly dislikes. But on the whole the phrase seems totally funny! It makes me smile even now, when I recollect the memories of those days :) It happened so that this man is a fellow-student of one of my Grannies, and until now when she talks about her friends, I ask her, “And what about Horse-Goat?” :)))

Grown-ups used to shout at us each time they found a new creation on the wall. And we knew it was no good to spoil the walls, but we could not restrain this soul squall. I remember one hit in our toilets made up of the quatrains in Russian across the whole wall saying,
“On WC walls to leave some notes
Believe me friends, it’s no hit
Among the shit you all are poets
Among the poets you’re a shit” :)))
Or lines like “It’s better all dead rats to eat, than to hear Alisa’s hit” (Alisa is a famous rock band of those days), or “Kurt’s not dead – he’s gone to smoke”, or “Who’s a fan of club Dynamo is a son of a blockhead mama” (Dynamo is a soccer club).

We liked to gather altogether in a yard and play games. Simple games with a ball: football or “square” (a football type game when 4 people draw a square with a chalk on the asphalt and divide it in 4 sectors, each of the 4 people is responsible for protecting his sector, and if the ball leaves the sector the person who kicked it scores a point; my friend Sveta (was my neighbour and best friend those days) and I used to play with the boys from our house, and we were constantly quarrelling simply because they were boys and we were girls – it was an everlasting fight until we all got 15 or 16).

There was a field in the neighbourhood used by Militia for training during the day, and in the evening we used it as a soccer field. Children from all the neighbouring yards joined us. I even met my first boyfriend Seryozha on the field during one of the games :) It was a relationship between 2 kids: I was 11, and he was 13. We exchanged love letters, and when I was at home because of homework he used to come up to my balcony, whistled, I took a rope, pulled it down to him, he tied sweets, chewing-gums, cookies and other tasty things to it, and I lifted the rope up again. So sweet! Ah where have those days of innocence and sincerity gone?! But then he beat my classmate black and blue just because he once came to me, and some other unpleasant moments, and it all was stopped by me. No idea where he is now. I used to meet him sometimes when I was passing his yard, some years after, when I was 15 and 16, and sometimes we even said, ‘Hey’ to each other, once he said, “Come sit with me for a while” but I said ‘no’, ‘coz he got into a bad company by that time, problems with Militia and alcohol. Then I learnt he was imprisoned twice. And then his tracks have completely disappeared.

Dodge ball – there were 2 types of it. One was traditional dodge ball when the crowd gathers in the middle between the 2 ball-kickers; the other was with one ball-kicker and the crowd stood at the wall, the “kicker” threw the ball to the wall aiming to hit someone. I remember I got a terrible head-hurt when we played it with a soccer ball, and this ball hit me so hard that I knocked against the wall.

“Squirrels-dogs” – a game when the people formed a circle and threw the ball to each other. And one was standing in the circle and tried to catch it. The others teased him, and he was running from one corner to another to get this ball.

“Odd man-out” (or “Third is odd” if we translate it word-for-word). Standing in pairs we formed a circle. One was a “he” (or “catcher” as you like) and also one was without pair. The catcher tried to catch that one without pair, and the latter had to stand up to one of the pairs, and the pair turned into a three-person line, third was odd, and now he had to escape from the catcher. Very active game with lots of running, shouting, and what not.

“Slow and steady wins the race” – I don’t know why it was called so. It’s just named by the first phrase in the phrasal unit that the he has to say, “Slow and steady wins the race, won’t miss anyone on your way, stop!” At the word “Stop!” everyone was supposed to stand still in the pose he was standing at that moment. And the he came up to everyone and tried to make him move – teased him, tickled him etc.

“Glimmers” – everybody was standing in pairs in a circle (one person in the pair after another) with one he. The he looked at the people in the front row and winked at the one whom he chose so that the back row person didn’t notice it. When a person saw that the he winked at him, he rushed to him, and the person behind him had to react and hold him, or he would lose the pair and become a he. I remember once my best school friend of those days Masha came to my yard (we lived at a one bus-stop distance from each other, and she usually played in her yard). We were standing in a pair. But then a boy, also Seryozha by the way, winked to me (he was the brother of one of my friends and liked me, and I liked that he liked me if I may say so, ha-ha in a couple there’s always one person who loves and one who lets the other love him – it’s a more widespread thing than two people hell in love with each other), and I remember Masha’s whisper: “I need to hold you, you know. But I’ll do it just one time for effect, and next time I will pretend and let you go” :))) And she did it. I was standing with Serg until the end of the game, and when somebody else winked at me and he did not notice I specially slowed to give him time and react ;) Ha-ha, how old was I? 11? 12? :)))

When we got older we liked to sit on the bench and play a quiet ball game named “Family”. One person was standing with a ball, and all the rest were sitting on the bench. The game-leader was creating a life story of each participant. He threw the ball to the first person, asking “Your name is…” and suggesting his variant. If the participant liked it, he caught the ball. If he didn’t - he didn’t. But suddenly the leader threw the ball shouting “Family” – and if the person caught the ball he could choose any name he liked. If he didn’t – the leader gave him any name he wanted. It might be a good name, or a dirty name (usually a dirty name, sure), and nothing could be changed. Then followed the questions like, “What is your boy/girlfriend’s name?” “Where did you meet?” “When did you have wedding” etc etc. It was funny when the story was created by the leader, coz he could make it so that the couple met at a dump. She was 6 and he was 99. They had wedding in the wood etc :)))

And sure some crazy deeds of ours like jumping from one garage to another (some fell down and hurt something, but these were rare cases) and climbing the trees (the person who planted the trees in front of our house used to come to the balcony and shout at us, “Get out of my plants you little fools!!!” but we never cared about it).

We also liked to call spirits, like The Queen of Spades and some home spirits – barabashka, domovoi etc (Russian counterparts of the English “brownie”). For that we had to gather in a dark cellar or just in a dark place and do some magic tricks, say magic words and wait… Usually it all ended with someone’s shout, “I see her/him!” – and we rushed out of the cellar screaming and crying :) When I was in the summer camp (I think I was 12) once we were calling some spirit (don’t remember which) in our ward. We did everything required, and said, “If you’re here, knock at the wall”. And we heard knocking!!! Ah we were so afraid, we ran out of the ward shouting, and were afraid to go back :) In the morning we learnt that the neighbouring ward heard it, and just knocked at the wall separating our ward from their ward :))))))

At home in our yard we found a hut and created a story that it was the home of spirits. Every day we chose one person who needed to go to the hut and talk to the spirits. The choice was made by the toss of the coin or a similar thing named “Rock Paper Scissors” (In Russian version it was actually "stone scissors paper";) guess you all know it: "Rock Paper Scissors - Tsu, Ye, Fa!"; rock wins against scissors, scissors win against paper, paper wins against rock). Everyone knew in his heart of hearts there were no spirits in the hut, but still everyone was afraid :) When he returned, he created stories about a talk with the spirits, what they said, and how he responded :)))

And another crazy game called “Sleep-sending”. One person pressed on the neck of another person, and that person had to fall asleep immediately. Most of us were pretending. After we woke up we were telling our dreams. We were small and did not understand that we could press on some artery and never wake up again!!! Cruel game of cruel kids of the 90s…

In winter we played snowballs, skied, skated, sledged and slid down the ice-hill. I remember my classmate Zhenya once broke my nose, because he stopped somewhere in the middle of sliding, and I slid after him and fell upon his boot. There was no blood, but the nose ached for a year and a half after that… We liked making snow figures, rolling snowballs (when the snow was not crumbly) and placing one on the other. When we were 9-10 years old a young man (for us he seemed a grown-up, but in fact he was just 16 or 17) used to come to our yard and play with us. I still can’t see the point of this coming. But maybe he just liked kids. We adored him! His name was Lyosha, but we called him Barabashka because of his family name – Barabanov. When he appeared we all jumped up to his neck and hang there – we were so happy! Our parents did not like it. They kept on saying, “This boy must be sick – there’s no sense in his coming and playing with you small girls”. But we never paid attention. Never was he a threat to us. When we grew up he disappeared. I sometimes met him afterwards when I was 15, 17, 19… He did not change. But of course he did not recognize me, and I never came up and start a chat.

I guess we were the last generation who liked to read. Until computers took all the time, but it happened only when we were in High School. Child detective stories were extremely popular in mid-90s. There were several series of such stories. One was a series of Hitchcock stories about a group of kids who solved crimes. The second was about 2 brothers – Frank (he was 18 and dark-haired) and Joe (a 17-year old blond) - this was my favourite series. And the third I also liked was about 5 kids (I don’t remember well, but I believe they were 5), 2 girls and 3 boys, and a dog. They were relatives, and met in summer, every time getting into an adventure. These books still stand in my bookcase, but it’s been a long time since I turned their pages last time. Of course we had to read a lot for school, but we never liked what we were supposed to read. It’s quite natural.

School… School… When I went to school in 1992 it was the last year of the Soviet school uniform. That usual one of a brown or black dress and a white apron (for girls) and dark-blue suits (for boys). We first had common Soviet schoolbags like the ones you see in old movies. But already at the end of 1992 colourful Western schoolbags started to appear. They cost a lot, and usually the richest kids were lucky to have such. When I changed the school the first memory of a new school was right connected with these schoolbags. In my old school only 2 kids had beautiful schoolbags. In the new school everyone had expensive colourful schoolbags. It’s a kid impression, but I liked my new school even starting with the way the pupils looked like :)

I also remember that the first day I came to the new class a boy held out a thick exercise-book to me with the words, “Fill it in!” It was the first time I saw this hit of many many years – Questionnaire. A thick exercise-book contained the info about its owner, and questions. There were dozens of questions about all aspects of life “What is your name?” “What is your favourite group?” “Who is your friend” “Whom do you love?” etc. The number of questions depended on its owner’s fantasy :) Usually at the end we had to leave some comments or wishes to the owner. Every one had a Questionnaire, some had even several Questionnaires, and they were filled in by hundreds of people. Of course we all were interested in the lines “Who is your friend?” and “Whom do you love?” Most often we left the first letters of a name and a family name of the person. Like Olga Kabuzova would look like “O.K.” :) The boy who gave me the first Questionnaire was the biggest hooligan of the class, but he liked me from the start for some reason, although I was shy (maybe because of that). In my Questionnaire that appeared several months after that he responded to the question “Whom do you love?” in the following way: “I LOVE YOU, YANA!” I think it was the first time when somebody said these words to me :))) It was he who had been beaten by my boyfriend Sergey a year ago when he just came to me for some book. Now he's playing solo guitar in one famous local band called "Leto na Marse" :) When many years after I was cleaning my drawer, I found several questionnaires of mine, grabbed them all and threw into the dustbin. How now I blame myself for that! What a fool! But what's done cannot be undone...

Reverting to what I was telling you about, when in the 7th grade I had to respond to the same question I didn’t know what to write. Well I liked one boy, and he was the most popular boy in our class, and he liked another girl. So I decided to name any other person to avoid rumors that I like Kirill he-he. And I chose his friend Rodik. Don’t know why. He was not popular. And I don’t know why I made up my mind to mention him. Maybe my intuition whispered to me that he was in fact much more interesting than his friend. I saw it years after when he grew up into a good-looking blond guy, very clever and straight-forwarded. He passed entrance exams to Moscow State University (the place where the most clever guys of Russia study), and left for Moscow. Now he graduated from it and probably stayed there as a PG student. But those days he was just Rodik :) I put his initials into the Questionnaire, and after some time I saw that he put my initials responding the question. That how it all started. For some time after that we were exchanging such mentions, then invited each other to Birthday Parties, danced slows (I think I still have a photo of us dancing somewhere in my writing-table) – were a pair? Who knows :) And then we just grew up… :)))

We were the last pioneers of Russia :)/a 'pioneer' is a famous Soviet analogue of a 'scout'/ The Pioneer Organization did not function properly already at that time, but we passed through the ceremony of dedication and received the usual attributes of the Pioneer Organization – a red pioneer necktie and a red cap. We never wore them, but we have them :) It is a legendary thing. There's not a single person in Russia and ex-USSR who does not know and remember it. Or at least know... It's so funny, when sometimes in the bus or tram there's a young boy or sitting on the bench and an old man or woman is standing beside him/her, and he/she does not stand up, you here 'Oh God, where the world's going... What kind of pioneers we're having now...' The Soviet kids lived according to the Code of Ethics, maybe partly because of that we used to be that 'Great Empire' :) "You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by..." (Hanson)

We did… We were… So many stories… Can’t remember all… Can’t write all…

Hope it gave you some picture of what Russia of the 90s was like, and how average people were living in those hard transition days.

With love,
Me span>