I have a hard memory of past work. A few months before my dismissal my mother died. At the funeral, our director handed me a envelope:

It is from the collective...

Okay, thank you to everyone who helped. Then, they invite me to another company, write a dismissal application. The news - no premiums, naked tariffs. That’s half the usual salary. I go to the director:

I’ve done a good job last month, or is there something wrong?

- You have been helped by the collective, and you are leaving this way... Therefore, the tariff.

What I defiled is still poorly said, words cannot convey.

When I almost finished bypassing the departments with a run, I was caught by one of the department’s managers:

Give it, take it here! He gives me a envelope.

What is it?

Money, help and funeral.

You are what! You have already helped! No need!

You don’t need to have this dog just paid you the tariff, without any extra words. It was as if the funeral aid had been taken back. No good, take it, all of us have fallen. It will not disappear from us. Good luck to you!

I am still in contact with many people from that work. Good people, I think, should be any collective.

People with strict morality perceive the world as a tragedy, and immorals as a comedy.

Urban cats and rural cats are, as they say, two big differences. Now I am surprised to see cat food in rural shops. Twenty years ago, it was a shame to think about it. Cats in the village were needed to catch mice. Behind the cats from the cat-rysolov was always the turn. No one knew exactly how many cats were in the herd in the yard - well they ran and ran. In the morning and evening, after breastfeeding the cows, they poured milk into them - well there and puppies, and eggs fled - the hell you will take them wherever anyone. In the winter, they lived in the barracks and ate with pigs. The population of rats and mice was reduced to a minimum. The main in the herd was the oldest cat - mother, grandmother, aunt, and you don't know who all the other members of the praide. Only sometimes let her into the kitchen, not chased if it passed. The cats, often, fed all together. The cat gave birth in a secluded place and for the second month brought the kittens to show - first their own, then all came together to call the masters - to tell, see what beautiful ones they brought. The cats were wild - they were not given into the hands, and, in general, these cats were not affectionate. No foot massage was done. But the owners admitted and appealed to us for help. Once the older woman ran - she calls somewhere - went to see, and there the young woman can not be born - well, they helped, her mother was a veterinarian. Often came, when they had the vertebrae of the fish on their teeth - asked to remove. We were protected as we could. I once watched two cats kill a snake. They have snakes in every yard, they also have their own territory. We decommissioned the old barrel and a swing of chess jumped out of the half - there are such people living in the south of Russia. This is the only poisonous snake. As a poison, I was bitten once. I caught a fish, hanging my legs in the water, well, it caught me on the heels, and apparently took the heels for the frog. I had a fever for three days and it all passed. Don’t believe those who say that snakes don’t bite in the water, just like they bite. So, this snake didn't have time and went five meters away - there are two older cats and another one. They took positions on different sides of the serpent and began to kill her. At first, the cat, which was behind the snake, struck her with a lightning blow on the head, the snake, turning around, made a stroke in her direction, trying to bite – it jumped one and a half meters up, leaving the attack, and, at this time, the snake was beaten by another cat. So they beat her in turn until she died.
Cats in the second or third year of life, after mating, in the spring left the house, sometimes returned, but more often not. The cats, feeling the approaching death, quietly left somewhere and I never saw bodies. Only the oldest came to say goodbye. He shakes his feet, looks in his eyes and leaves.

Jules Verne described the journey of man to the center of the Earth, Herbert Wells created the man-invisible, Rudolph Raspe sent Baron Munchausen from the cannon to the Moon, but at a fantasy contest with a huge breakdown defeated the deputy head of the GIBDD in the Voronezh region, who explained the possession of 22 apartments with "honest labor".

There was a wave of confidence. Even though I was late, I decided to do my part.

My wedding is approaching and many do not understand why I do not invite my mother. A lot of reasons.

Starting from my 2 years old, my mom began conflicts with my father, she scolded me for any excuse, so that the bleachs were held for a month.



When I was 7 she went to Russia (lived in Ukraine) and I stayed with my father. He did not even raise his hand, but he constantly drank and poured all the money either there or on his mistress. I even remember eating pasta for 3 months and my father brought a huge package of foods and put it on the refrigerator. I poured all the saliva, leaving the wet sludge at this refrigerator. Red package of 2 liters of juice, bananas, some cake. I was eagerly waiting for my father from work to try what was in the package (and why didn’t it work without it?). He came from work. He took the package and took it to his mistress.



My grandmother had two shops at the time, one of which was right next to my school. Sometimes she was allowed to take something for 3 hryvnia. At the time, it was 2 minions. I included the Kung Fu Panda cartoon at home and pretended to eat a cupcake with a secret ingredient. That was where her communication with me ended.



My aunt on my dad’s line forbade me from bringing me to family holidays, saying I was dressed as if I was scary. Well, of the clothes were only worn and large several sizes of things, which sometimes gave a familiar mom.



When my mother took me to Moscow, I lived with my grandmother. From that it was scary even to get sick, otherwise the wings instantly big and long.

I lived by myself. No one cared about how I studied (and I studied well), no one cared about whether I came home or not. What I ate in the day or did not eat. These people were not in need but actively pretended that I did not exist. But now that I was finally able to dress normally, found a job, got a relationship and an apartment (in a mortgage) so everyone became interested, why am I not communicating and not inviting to the wedding? Really why?

I want to tell you about my life in Tajikistan during the 1991-1997 civil war that broke there, which ended with the signing of a ceasefire. The ceasefire, of course, did not mean the immediate end of the war. Combat operations and all kinds of military operations continued until the beginning of the 2000s. During the war about 100,000 were killed. People (mostly men from 14 to 50 years old).



By the beginning of the war, I was 12 years old and I was the eldest child in a family of 5 (parents and two younger sisters). My parents worked and tried every way to find money for food, and I was obliged to buy bread. Now I realize that the task that was assigned to me was too difficult and sometimes dangerous for the child of my age. In the rows for bread, at the time, there were adult men who arranged tricks and pressures that were not as dangerous for them - as for the ugly and small 12-year-old boy. The longest and most dangerous queues were at the BKK (Bulo-Candy Combinate) on the outskirts of the city. Bread was sold there "all day", but in batches: they baked a batch - they started selling from one window. Everything was washed up in 15-30 minutes. Then, again waiting at 2-3 hours - until the next batch. The "order" in the rows was brought by militants-Pamyrs (the outsiders of GBAO - the Mountain-Badakhshan Autonomous Region), who occupied that area of the city for a short period of time. The ranks “controlled” with rubber shells and shots over the heads. By the way, the Pamirs were the first to introduce their armed forces into the capital (in fact, starting the war) and untouched worse than all the other sides combined. Responsibility for most of the murders and robbery of civilians in 1992-1993. It lies on the palm trees. The rest of the Tajiks still don’t like them for that.

Civil War by the Eyes of a Teenager Civil War, Tajikistan, Leningrad, 90s



The artillery in the city did not surprise anyone.



In order not to be distracted by the thought of the extensive period of my life during the war, I will tell you about two instances when I was almost dead.



In 1994 (I was already 13 years old) I and two of my cousins, who were 1 and 2 years older than me, went to Kuibyshevsky district (about 100 km). from the capital) to my grandmother to take some flour and medicine for my grandfather. I was in a bus, filled with women and children. There were six men on the bus (including me and my brothers). We drove 40 kilometers from the city, as we were stopped at the “block-post”, which represented 1 BTR, a couple of cars (cross the road) and a person 10-15 militants (different degrees of smoke).



Two militants entered the bus and asked for documents from three men. They showed passports and took them out of the bus. Then came the turn of me and my brothers. We did not have any documents. We thought of ourselves as children (and we were wrong). We also started to get out of the bus and at that moment there were shots. Three men, quietly and quietly, were shot at the BTR. They were not interrogated, they were not beaten – they were just taken out and shot. We were also put to the BTR, but on the other hand from the bodies.



It should be noted that shortly before this one of my brothers, a rap fan, looking at the clips, decided to shave the patterns on his head. I wanted something like this:

Civil War by the Eyes of a Teenager Civil War, Tajikistan, Leningrad, 90s



True, it was done at home and therefore it turned out to be very curly, dull and terrible, but the brother, for some reason, decided not to clean up this "beauty", but just walked on people in a cap.



We are standing at the BTR, we are already waiting for the shooting, and here the wind from the brother shakes the cap, and the militants saw his hair. They cried very long and loudly. He called his brother a fool and joked. Three minutes later, laughing, they just let us back into the bus and we left. I don’t know whether they wanted us to be shot seriously or “shocked,” but it seems to me that my brother’s stupid hair and the drug intoxication of the militants saved us from shooting. By the way, the block-post was government.





The second case was in 1997, and I was already in 11th grade. I had a classmate, Tola (a painfully thick boy with a curved leg), whose older brother served in the 201th Russian Division. Tolik once pulled a F-1 grenade into the school that his brother gave him (well, or he just sprayed it from his brother). Here is this:

Civil War by the Eyes of a Teenager Civil War, Tajikistan, Leningrad, 90s



And he was amused by pulling out the check, and pressing the trigger, he walked with it, showing us how "hard and fearless" he was. He then returned the check.



The check consists of a ring and a double wire, which is inserted into a special hole in the incinerator and bends in different directions (type "sic"). Accordingly, with each pulling out of the cheque, these "sicks" were bended, and with each squeezing in place, they were bended to the previous position. After the second check was pulled out, we (the classmates) advised Tolik to put a grenade in his ass until we put it there. He calmed down and we went to a history lesson.



All the boys in the class were sitting on the back seats and nothing predicted trouble. Tolik was sitting in a row next to me at a distance of extended arm. He pulled out the grenade again and pulled out the check under the rope and pulled the lever. Smiling, he showed me a ring, and I saw that one of the "sicles" had fallen. Tolik panicked, pushed the check back and tried to bend the second "sack". He also fell. The wire on the check became short, and we were afraid that it would not hold the lever. Tolik carefully handed over the grenade to a classmate, raised his hand and asked the teacher to the toilet - escaped from the classroom. The classmate pulled his hand with a grenade into the pocket of his jacket and also asked to go to the toilet. The teacher said he could go as soon as Tolik returned. But he never returned. The classmate was sitting with a grenade in his pocket for 30 minutes, pressing, tight enough, the lever.



We understood that the grenade might explode, but nobody even tried to go out or tell the teacher. After the call, we ran into the labor office with the crowd, found a hard wire and pushed it to the place of the check. They left the school, entered the entrance of an empty dormitory, and the classmate stretched his hand. The grenade did not explode, but those few seconds, while my classmate slowly pushed his fingers, were the longest in my life. We twisted the fire from the grenade, and materialed Tolick for a long time. He was saved by his illness.