Simple Truths of Life - страница 14

Summer holidays have come. I think it was the year when the village ceased to be a place of comfort for me, as our company and company from the other end of the village began to spend time together. I again began to be silent constantly, because the thought that I could start talking with stutter and people would start laughing at me, looking at me weirdly, or they would just start thinking something not very good chilled my whole body.

Another nuisance was that some time ago my father sold his mother’s apartment for very cheap, about a quarter of its market value. As I understand it, his acquaintances deceived him when he was drunk. Before selling the apartment, father rented it out, but then there was a small fire in it, and someone talked him into selling a Moscow two-room apartment of 52 square meters for just a million rubles. Simply put, someone had bought their apartment at a huge discount. Father then bought a new car and a TV for the money received. Then he began to drink the rest of the money away.

It so happened that in the summer, my father decided to buy me a motor scooter, since my motorcycle was constantly breaking down, and almost all my friends were riding on these new (for our village) vehicles. He arrived with cash already withdrawn. Having traveled to the nearest cities, we were able to find only one store where only one Chinese scooter was sold. I tried it by having driven it on a local road. Everything seemed quite normal, including the power of a 50-liter moped. I then had a choice: to take that one scooter or risk that my father would drink the already withdrawn money away, which, alas, could happen, given his previous decisions. We bought that scooter. After some time, it became clear that the Chinese scooter had a chain instead of a variator and a drive belt, which is why it tangibly lost in power to its brothers from Japan. This led to the fact that very soon I could not have anyone ride on my scooter except for myself.

Unfortunately, the problems did not end there. It soon became clear that some strangers began to live in father’s apartment. Father himself was almost always drunk. It became clear to my adult relatives that those people wanted to get their hands on my father’s apartment. Then my cousin helped us make the deed of gift for that apartment to me so that my father could not become homeless. A few months later, dad told how those people were shocked to find out that the apartment no longer belonged to him and disappeared very quickly from his life, possibly in search of other people with alcohol addiction… There were also some people who tried to redirect my father to think that his son, that is me, will kick him out from the apartment. Unfortunately, my father actually asked us one day if we wanted to do something like that – certainly not! He then sighed with relief and in fact lived in his apartment until the end of his life, even despite all the difficulties that we had to overcome…

In the village, I fell in love with one girl who was new in our company and was older than me. I then often thought about telling her about my feelings, but each time, when I was outside with her, I could not force myself to do this during our conversations. The fear of speech overpowered every time. It is interesting that I spoke normally when we talked about other topics, but as soon as I thought about telling the truth, I was immediately constrained by my insecurities. Many years of life had taught me that when I start talking in this state of consciousness, speech stutters are guaranteed. And I did not want her to know.