Tag #147796 - Interview #78423 (Mikhail Plotkin )

All borough boys were busy with games. Every summer battles started, street against street. We all prepared clay ‘shells,’ ran and threw them at each other on command. After that we ran to bathe in the river. Timber was procured upstream and floated down the Ulla. We got onto these rafts and dived into the water. The current was very strong. Once I was drawn under a log by the stream. There was no air to breathe. I choked and lost consciousness. Fortunately, a man passing by noticed me and dragged me out with his boat-hook. In winter we went ice-skating. When Mother gave me real skates, I became so keen on it that I stopped going to school: in the morning I just went to the ice-rink instead of going to school. I had to repeat a year, the third grade. Mother refused to buy me a bicycle as a punishment. I asked her very much, but she was inexorable. It was the most ‘acute pain’ of my childhood and I still remember it.