Icy Roads

Siberia is known for its severe winters and every single year there is a lot of snow on the roads. At that time there were pretty much no services to clean it, so eventually all this snow turned into ice. All the guys from my neighborhood took that opportunity to go sledding.

We often raced on our sleds with each other, not being afraid that there was a risk of being hit by a car. The main thing was to reach the finish line first at the end of road, which was in the form of a long ice hill. When I was 10, I got a cool sled, which was really fast and I won the races quite often. Before the start of our race, we waited until there would be no cars on the road. We sped up our sleds, jumped on them and flew on the road. Sometimes there were cars that appeared on our way. So, we had to react quickly and turn away from cars to avoid getting hit. After such dangerous and cold competitions my hands and feet were totally frozen. My eyes often got stuck together because of the ice on my eyelashes. On my returning home, my arms and legs began to warm up causing pain and tears. It was a wonderful time of the year, but it was insanely cold.

The Hairdresser

I decided to have my hair cut. I took my father’s car and drove to the barber shop nearby. The hairdresser who invited me to the chair was very tall and was always smiling. He put an apron on me and asked what kind of haircut I wanted. I said that I didn’t want a short haircut. The barber, shaking his head said, “Okay.” Could you please wait a minute? I’ll be back shortly”.

I thought to myself, “Well, I can wait for a minute, there is no problem.” The barber went somewhere. I waited for five minutes. Then another five minutes passed, and I started thinking, “It’s Okay, maybe the guy is sick.” Even fifteen minutes later my hairdresser did not show up.

So, here I was, sitting on the chair with an apron tied around my neck. I continued waiting for my barber, looking at myself in the mirror like a complete idiot. Half an hour had already passed when I began to get angry. I asked myself. “Maybe it’s a TV joke and I am being taped on a candid camera that had been put directly in the mirror, which I look at for thirty minutes. Maybe they were checking my patience, watching and laughing at me behind the door with that hairdresser?” But, finally, my hairdresser got back. I looked at him and said, “Oh, you’re quick!”

And he asked me quietly, “What kind of haircut would you like?”

I answered, “Oh, you have already forgotten what kind of haircut I want after you hung out somewhere for 30 minutes, haven’t you?”

He did not respond to my rudeness, as if he had not gone out. I immediately noticed that his movements were not adequate. His eyes were big and shiny. So, I thought that he was drunk, although I did not smell the alcohol.

The barber took the electric cutting machine and started trying to plug it in. It was unforgettably spectacular. His moves were really funny and, as I learned later, all that time he spent outside he was taking drugs! After about a minute he finally managed to plug the machine in. His coordination was horrible and, consequently, he almost entirely shaved the right side of my head.

After that, I exploded with anger. I stood up, pulled off the apron and screamed on every single person in that barber shop and went away smashing the door behind me. I got into the car with my half cut head and went to a different hairdresser’s.

When I walked into the new salon, all the girls looked at me and laughed loud, then asked, “Oh, my god?! Who ate the half of your hair?”

I told them what had just happened to me. They laughed and listened to my story till the very end. They felt sorry for me and fixed my haircut. While they were working, they told me that the guy who wanted to shave me was a drug addict and that the barber shop where he worked, belonged to his mother.

The School

My school was quite usual. Some people called it “The Prison” or the “Jail”. There were criminal leaders all over the school and we lived by criminal rules. Even some schoolboys were friends with criminals and ex-prisoners. Because of my illness, I missed a year of school. So, I had lessons at home. Then, when I came back to school, I got into correctional class for weak students. That year was the most vivid and unforgettable for me. There were bullies, smokers, drunkards in my new class. I can remember one of my Physics classes. That day we had a new physics teacher, who was 70 years old. She could difficulty seeing and hearing. I was sitting in the middle of the class, and at the back of the class I could see the guys smoking something, apparently it was marijuana. They slightly opened the window, crawled under the desk and started smoking the cigarette. The whole class realized what was going on there except for our new teacher. At the end of the lesson she asked, “Who was playing with matches the whole lesson?”

The bell rang and our “stars” got out of the class laughing a lot.

One day there was a new student in our class. His name was Kostya. Unfortunately, our “stars” hated him from the very first minute. Every day they beat Kostya so much, that sometimes he could not even get up on his feet and he was always late for lessons. I was very sorry for Kostya, but I couldn’t do anything to help him.

Soon, Kostya couldn’t bear such beatings he called his dad for help.

They were standing at the main entrance of our school. Kostya’s father wanted to give a lesson to my classmates, who had beaten his son. When the bell rang, our class went out of the school. I was behind everyone, shaking hands and saying goodbye to classmates. At the main entrance, I noticed Kostya and his father saying bad words to our guys. The classmates didn’t like it and reacted very quickly. They came down to Kostya’s father and started beating him. When he fell down, they turned their attention to Kostya and beat him up too. Seeing that the father and the son were lying on the ground, they stopped kicking them and went home.

All that happened right in front of the windows of the principal’s office. The very next day, Kostya took the documents and moved to a different school, and I never saw him again.

Our teachers were not very kind either. It was Geography, and the teacher got angry at the student, who did not know something; she came up to him and hit his head with a wooden school pointer, so that it turned into chips. He stood up, yelled at the teacher and smashed the door behind him. We gave him a nickname “The Priest”. I remember that he loved eclairs.

One day we were sitting at class, and the teacher went to have lunch. The Priest made a bet that he would break the desk with his head. If he won, he would get two eclairs. Everybody, who was in the class, stopped and watched the show. The first hit on the desk did not give the wanted result. The second one was a little more powerful and the desk cracked slightly. The third hit was the most powerful and he finally broke that desk and won his bet. Everyone applauded him. They shouted.

“Hey Priest! You’re the desk breaker! Good for you!”

Three minutes later the teacher came back, and immediately paid attention to the bruises on the priest’s forehead and then to the broken desk. She asked, “What happened?”

The whole class was silent, some people were giggling. The Priest thought for a little bit and replied,

“I was running and accidentally hit the door in the cafeteria!”

“And how many times did you hit the door?”

Everybody started laughing.

“Okay, now what happened to your desk?”

“That had been broken before we got to class!”

Everybody started nodding to convince the teacher that the desk had already been broken.

“You’re savages!” the teacher concluded.

It was impossible to go to school toilet. There were clouds of tobacco smoke. Because it was winter, the students did not want to run outside to smoke in -30C. So, everybody smoked in school toilets.

The School Break

I was a first-grader when that happened. The kids were playing catchup. I was sitting on a branch and saw my friend Sergey run into another boy’s head. The hit was really bad and Sergey’s tooth got stuck in the forehead of the other boy. They both fell and started crying. The teachers called the ambulance.

The School Dentist

One day, I had a toothache and went to the dentist’s, who worked in my school. The dentist’s office was located on the third floor. I knocked on the door and entered the room. Once I got inside, the doctor told me to sit on the chair to be examined. When she found the bad tooth, she said, “Unfortunately, we’ll have to remove the nerve.”

It was the first time I had ever gone to the dentist’s. I was very nervous, but my tooth hurt very much and I was tired of the pain. “Will it be painful?” I asked.

“It’ll be pretty painful. Unfortunately, I don’t have any anesthetization, so, you’ll have to bear the pain or I will have to remove the tooth later.”

I nodded and the doctor began.

It was unforgettably painful! Doctor started winding the nerve on the needle. The pain was pretty bad, but I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Suddenly she pulled out the nerve so hard, that I hardly managed to stay on the chair! Just imagine how horrible and painful it is to pull out a nerve without any anesthetization! After that sweat appeared on my face. Every time the doctor pulled the nerve, my hands clutched to the handles of the chair, and I prayed for it to be done as soon as possible. This terrible process last for about an hour! At the end I almost lost my consciousness. I felt relieved when the “surgery” was finished, but my tooth was bleeding for two days! I can still remember the doctor’s face and her dreadful instruments that caused so much pain!

The Stolen Blood

At the age of ten I was going to a medical checkup at the hospital, which looked much like a post-war military hospital. There I could see spring beds in my room, dilapidated walls, creaking doors and people were coughing everywhere. The food over there was disgusting. It was absolutely forbidden to go out of this terrible place. So, I had to spend two weeks there like a prisoner.

My room was on the third floor, and mentally ill people were placed one floor higher. Almost every night, I could hear horrible screams from the upstairs and I couldn’t sleep.