However, five years of continuous sports activities helped me feel confident among my classmates. With physical education, I coped perfectly well and repeatedly got into the school team in basketball and gymnastics, therefore, I was never subjected to ridicule and bullying.
Just by virtue of my nature, I was perfectly able to stand up for myself. Throughout the sixth grade, I successfully fought with the boys, and they did not dare to bully me, but if sometimes someone tried to offend me, then there were those who wanted to protect me. Therefore, at school, I felt quite comfortable. In our class, kids didn't really bully other kids. Everyone chose friends according to their interests, and if, for example, I didn’t like someone from the class, then we simply didn’t communicate with this person. But conflicts and quarrels, of course, happened from time to time.
In the eighth grade, my mother told me: “If you want to lose weight, go swimming.” I wanted to lose weight and went swimming and ended up, at the same time, in a scuba diving group. The coach turned out to be a young beautiful nineteen-year-old girl from Alma-Ata.
She was a part-time student of the Physical Education Institute and came to us specially to assemble a team of submariners. Lena was also in this group - a very pretty girl from my class, with an eccentric character, distinguished by a rare equanimity, which our teachers sometimes took for arrogance.
For example, being late for a lesson, Lenochka entered the class with an expression of careless boredom and condescension on her face, which immediately aroused the fury of our history teacher. And when the teacher began to get angry, she had a nervous tic, expressed in a fervent wink. Therefore, a hysterical cry, coupled with a wink, led Lenochka to the opposite effect: instead of sincere repentance, she had an attack of laughter. The teacher, driven to the extreme, kicked Lena out of the lesson, and she, satisfied, happily left.
When I, realizing that this would not end well, asked Lenochka why she was laughing and thereby running into trouble, my friend sincerely shrugged:
- I can't resist. The teacher yells and at the same time winks, as if saying: “Pay no attention, it’s me, I’m swearing for the sake of it ...”.
"But you know she's screaming in earnest."
I know, but I can't stop laughing.
In this sense, I did not differ much from Lenochka. We didn't know at all how people manage to blush. We listened to frequent thrashings from teachers with bored faces and with a complete absence of traces of remorse on the face. This pissed off the teachers. “Like peas on the wall!” They lamented: “If only they blushed!”.
I have always been interested in the question: how people blush. Often, standing in front of the mirror, holding my breath and pushing with all my might, I tried to achieve at least a slight pink tint on my face. I looked stupid, but the result was zero, and how this happens remained a mystery to me for many years.
Lena and I had impenetrable characters. Once, the two of us were put on the line in front of the senior classes. Negligent students were chastised by several teachers at once. I don’t know why it seemed funny to us, but we were holding back the whole line with all our might so as not to burst out laughing and tried from the bottom of our hearts to concoct repentant faces. But nothing came out.
We started grunting, turning on each other. Soon, these futile attempts failed completely, and at the next angry remark, we laughed obscenely, which plunged the teachers into complete rage.
Then Lenochka and I figured out for a long time what the devil had to laugh at such a moment, and who made whom laugh first. But after a fight, waving your hands is a completely useless exercise, because the accusations of all mortal sins were heard, the parents were called, the conclusions about us - the shameless ones, were made.
Beloved chemistry teacher Lilia Tikhonovna was also sometimes surprised: “Everyone says upbringing, upbringing, and what kind of upbringing can be if there are such different children in one family. For example, Oleg Senov - a boy is a pleasure to look at. Both an excellent student and a smart student, polite and accurate, but Lena Senova is his complete opposite.
Or Yura - such a diligent, responsible, well-mannered young man, but his sister Ira ... . So explain to me how in one family there can be such different children. After all, it is impossible to imagine that their parents bring them up differently.
In the seventh grade, Nadia came to our class to study. We lived next door to her, so we spent a lot of time together. They went to and from school as a couple, walked in the yard, visited the figure skating section, had mutual friends. We were connected by common interests, similar views on things and events, but our characters were completely different.
I spent hours at Nadia's house. She, unlike me, had a lot of responsibilities at the age of thirteen. Daily cleaning of a two-room apartment fell entirely on her fragile shoulders. I came to visit and distracted Nadia with my conversations.
Once I said that my parents, having visited India, among many things, learned about a funny traditions of the local population. If the hosts believed that it was time for the guest to go home, then they hinted to him about this by placing a broom in the corner of the room.
Nadia immediately, not having time to properly listen to my colorful story about the exotic life of the Indian natives, rushed into the corridor, grabbed a broom and solemnly hoisted it into the corner of the living room.
- Are you kicking me out?
- Exactly.
- About?
- Karochka, dear, I'm chatting with you, and I can't do anything about the housework. Go home already. A?
- And I don’t think, you’ll still have time to get out, I came to visit you, and you kick me out. Get out if you want, I'm not bothering you, - I said shamelessly, and did not even think about leaving.
In general, at that time, I sinned with impudence, sometimes bordering on arrogance, because not only my girlfriends, but sometimes their parents, could not expel me.
Sometimes, I came for Nadyushka, and her mother categorically forbade going for a walk, and she escorted me home so that she would not have a bad influence on her daughter. But I was in no hurry to leave, and while Nadya, in full, was throwing a tantrum under the slogan “Freedom to the oppressed!!! Give the street !!!”, I patiently waited for how all this noisy action would end. Sometimes it's wrong...
I, also, in my soul, was overly confident in the correctness of my judgments, and I led discussions with an aplomb that did not allow the existence of an opposing point of view, which always annoyed my girlfriends, and Nadia in particular. Since we communicated with her most often, we quarreled most often.
This thin, curly-haired creature had an extremely bad temper. The thirst always beat out of her, to contradict everyone and everything.
So in her youth she was not restrained and eccentric. Emotions were running high. If Nadyushka sobbed, then at the same time she almost banged her head against the wall, if she was happy, then she jumped up to the ceiling.
I, a person who is calm by nature, and also inclined to pedagogy, sometimes felt uncomfortable, and I pulled her in every possible way. But Nadyushka could not stand the pressure on the psyche and, after my remarks, she acted exactly the opposite.
While still at school, we swore a hundred times a day, scattered to different sides of the street, and before the start of classes we put up, at the next break we quarreled again and scattered to different corners of the school.
And yet we were irresistibly drawn to each other, probably like two complete opposites. We differed, like heaven and earth, both externally and in character. I am a large fair-haired calm and unflappable. Nadyushka is extremely thin, swarthy, curly, temperamental extravagant.
To be like everyone else, she could not and did not want to. If something came into fashion, then Nadyushka dressed in something completely opposite. For example, when everyone wore bell-bottoms - wide, long pants without arrows and a belt, she sewed narrow short pipes for herself, almost breeches, and told everyone that it was they who were behind the times, and in the Baltic States, the eternal trendsetter in the Soviet Union, For a year now they have been walking in such trousers. And since Nadyushka sewed very well, soon the youth changed into something similar.
After a while, we nevertheless learned to communicate more or less tolerably, but this happened only when I realized that, in general, I didn’t want to redo it, that it was this Nadya that I liked. We could get along fine for two, even three months, but then the accumulated irritation slowly began to spill out of us. First, in the form of small skirmishes. “You feel,” I said to Nadyushka, “A storm is coming soon!” And sure enough, not even a week passed, and we already had time to quarrel to the nines.
Then we didn’t talk for ten days, we sat in different corners, visited different friends. But soon we were drawn to each other again. We became extremely tolerant and mutually polite. This went on for two or three months and everything repeated again.