A lesson in ..... er.... hmm.... something important probably

I had a really random memory from elementary school today. It must have been second or third grade, in Leningrad USSR, if that makes any difference. My mom had given me a little toiletry bag with some old makeup - dried up nail polish, used up eye lash or perhaps eyebrow color, the kind you had to spit into and rub to dissolve, old bright blue eye shadow, that sort of thing. So, treating it as the treasure that it was, I took it to school to show off to my girlfriends. School policy forbid makeup, but I wasn't wearing it, and it was unusable anyway, so I don't know why I ended up getting in trouble in the first place. But what was really odd was what I can only assume was the punishment.

Memory is hazy on some details but for some reason or another the principal of the school, who was a truly terrifying dame of sturdy proportions with hair in a bun, and who by an unfortunate coincidence was also my English teacher, ended up in our classroom. She told me to bring the makeup bag up to the teacher and give it to her. "No", said I - it was a treasure and a gift from my mother. Eventually, obviously, I lost that argument and had to give the bag over. She then told me to come over to the wall by where she stood, which was a common place to have to stand if you had been a brat in class and where being punished by humiliation or whatnot. Then she told me, and this befuddles me still, to bang my head against the wall. "No" I said again, and again she kept on until I finally gently tapped my head against said wall. "Do you always do what other people tell you to do?" she then asked, sending me back to my seat.

I am afraid that the moral of that lesson is not to clear to me to this day. Was it that by being interested in makeup I was trying to do as others do? But wouldn't my repeated refusal to obey her commands be answer enough that I do not, in fact, always do as others tell me to? Or should I not have given in and hit my head on the wall no matter how often she demanded it?

Surreal Encounters in Cyberspace

Hurray! Following a brief track through the valleys of colds and flues I am back in the land of the living. (And there was much rejoicing...)

Anyway, over Thanksgiving I was reunited with a dear childhood friend and we had a lovely time looking at pictures, decorating the Christmas tree and drinking hot tottie. She was also kind enough to introduce me to the joys of http://vkontakte.ru, a facebook-like website for Russians. Remarkably, I was able to locate my old classmates whom I have not seen in nearly 15 years!!! Eagerly I had typed in my school name and class in the search field and received quite a number of hits, but there were several problems. They had all changed so much (well, we were 12 when we last saw each other after all!) and I could not for the life of me remember any names (with a few exceptions, and even then only the first name).

Moreover, and this is really the interesting part - I still had certain notions about the character of my various classmates, based on 15-year old events! I mean, this was the time when it was important who you had a crush on, who was a tattle-tail, who took your favorite pen and who was your best friend in the entire world! And so I found myself looking over the profiles of these people, men and women who have long finished college, married, spawned etc, and thought to myself - "wow, here is Lada! We used to skip class and climb trees and I used to take the bus all the way to her place!" or "Natasha - she was always the tallest in the class and lived in my building and had a little sister who threw up on me once", and "Anja - she got me into so much trouble, that jerk." And here they all are, excited to 'see' me, asking me how I've been. Do they remember me better than I do them? What kind of people did they turn out to be? Did my 'friends' and my 'foes' mingle, have romances, get over our childhood prejudices? Whatever happened to that girl whose name I don't even recall but who was my nemesis, teacher's pet and over all coolest girl in the class? And would she have turned out to be my best friend if I had stayed?