Peter in the 90s

It was too late. We sat in the room. A lamp burned on the bedside, my mother laid out the pastion on the computer, I told about the events at school. Suddenly in the darkness of the corridor appeared bright lights - orange, yellow, white.

“Look, how beautiful it is, Mom,” I said and pointed my hand to the lights in the hallway.

Mom took her eyes off the computer screen, immediately jumped up and ran out into the hallway. On the floor at the entrance door, a flame burned brightly, flame tongues licked the door and climbed to the jackets on the hanging and shoes at the wall. Mother stumbled, went into the bathroom, jumped out of there with wet clothes in her hands and threw him into the fireplace.

She tried to call the neighbors, even the best friend of Aunt Tane from the third floor... But no one risked to get out of the apartment and see what was going on outside our door, in the entrance. Firefighters arrived and shut the door.

It turned out that the door was filled with gasoline and poured gasoline under the door. Then they burned. Dermatin covering of the door burned easily. The ceiling and walls on the floor were in black divides. Probably a week later, my mother took me and my brother and went to Moscow with their parents. Dad stayed in Peter to deal with the requests of the racketers.

In Moscow, we were hardly attracted to school, also in English, near home. The English school was different. They came here not to study, came here in leather jackets and to measure the cars of their parents. I didn’t have a leather jacket, I didn’t have much. There were brains. A couple of people bought such merits and I got friends. Moscow, in general speaking, seemed unfriendly to me, and the school was strange. On the controls, you could use textbooks, teachers even suggested the number of the page... it was fashionable to upload rights and argue about the ratings, with lessons they helped each other for money. And there was also a drawing that we did not have at school. I still remember how I fought over the drawing of the hook until my grandfather explained that it was possible to divide the circle into six parts by putting a circle on it with six rays.

And then I won some math Olympiad, by chance, it seems I was the only one in the class to put a module when calculating the square root. In general, we just did this at the school in Peter already, and the Moscow program lagged behind us. I was given a note and pencil.

The most interesting thing happened after the Olympics - the winners from different schools were invited to participate in the selection entrance tours to the mat. school. But it was a completely different school - normal, filled up with the same botanists as me, without parental jeeps and leather jackets. To say that I wanted to go there is to say nothing at all. I wandered and prayed all the selection tours, and on each tour we became noticeably less.

On the board were written logical tasks, on the table was a sheet and a pencil... after experimenting on paper, you could raise your hand and explain the solution of the task to one of the teachers in the class, not necessarily to the end, and the answer was not important. Some answers were counted, some not. We could not prepare, but we could pray. And I prayed.

My mother didn’t know why she took me to the exam. The task on the board she did not understand, her child was not a genius. But it was she who pushed me at the end. According to the results of the tours, several people were selected, who had to be asked again at the interview. And here, when the question was decided will take this white-brush or "this guy," my mom spoke to me: "Speak English, talk about your foolish football, about playing guitar. You wanted here. Interest the people!”

Oh, what a charm, she’s playing football! We have a female football team!

I was taken.