Igor Yevtishenkov - Collection of Stories

I’m happy we hit it off, folks, so I’m not going to drag outmy speech. Only two weeks left before the exams start and we’re going to have to pull our socks up, if we want to pass. We’re going to set asidethe next fortnight just for revision and have a cramming session on the eve of the exam. In other words, we’re going to free upsome time by cancelling all non-exam lessons like PE and Arts. Are you up for it? All school sports matches will be held overuntil the exams are finished. We think it would be better than trying to fitrevision in around sport commitments. The sports staff agreed that putting backthose matches wouldn’t cause any serious problems. We won’t setschedules backtoo much so that we won’t be able to fit in all the matches before the end of the term. So now, puteverything else out of your mindand concentrate on your revision. No more fritteringtime away – get down to some serious work.

Sports staff said they had to bring the game forward to this Tuesday as school would be closed the next week. We started discussing how to prepare for the exams and Jim was dragginghis speech outfor an hour as if he were a headteacher. I thought I had ages to prepare for my exams but they have crept up on mein no time at all. We got together for a cramming session at Paul’s house and used his printer. Soon he asked us to try to eke outthe paper since he had no more at home and it was late to pop out to buy some more.

I wish I could go on a journey into the past long before I was born. There is no time machine that could takeme backto my childhood. I can only try to think backto what everyday life was like 50, 60, 100 years ago, before TV, before computers, before fridges and washing machines. It turns out that many of our devices date backto the early 20th century. I couldn’t imagine that old vacuum cleaner in our attic is just a leftoverfrom a bygone era.

I’m sorry to holdyou upbut you must sign these forms before you go in tomorrow. I’m happy the meeting is over. It dragged onand I got irritable too. It tookme backto the times I worked as a secretary in the court. OK, thanks a lot! See you tomorrow!

Now I have to go home. I’ll have to drive ten miles at rush hour. Yesterday there was an accident and a pile-up of ten cars caused a long tailback. If there are no hold-upstoday, I won’t get stuck in a traffic jam. So I must arrive by about seven o’clock. I have to call my kids and hurrythem up. Their French lesson ran onlonger than expected, so they won’t leave school till 4.30 p.m. and I’ll have to wait for them in the car. Then they’ll be complaining they can’t keep up withme on the way to the gym.

OK, I am having some time to sort outthe post now… Three weeks passed by before I got a reply to my letter of complaint. Here it is. They got around to sending the reply. How can I plan anything with such hold-ups? Nobody knows what lies ahead. All I can do is just take it one day at a time.

When I first appeared in Cherry GmbH’s office I thought I might be promoted to the position of Senior Regional Sales Manager but I was a long way out thinking that. Sales Director Mr. Suesmilch, in all innocence, sincerely told me there were enough taxi drivers in Germany and they didn’t need one more. The best offer was to come back to Russia and try to succeed in climbing the ladder over there. I spent ten years in vain. So when I was offered another position in a successful multinational corporation, I jumped at the chance. One of the main reasons for my immediate acceptance was the opportunity for a large amount of foreign travel. One day I was sitting relaxing in a cafe by the Seine after a hard day’s business, before jetting off to an important meeting the next morning in Rome. How romantic it all was. It took me five years to start recognizing that my emotions changed. I can’t say I understood that a life spent on planes and in hotels is lonely, dull and exhausting – not at all. I didn’t long to be back at home and didn’t dream of the simple pleasures of having someone to watch television with, of being asked how my day was. I had a nice family and three kids.

However, one day, my mindset changed. As I lay on the bed in my luxurious hotel room, I could see no benefit other than a high salary. “What’s the point being a hunting dog in an expensive suit with an indulging, patronizing smile, doing the same job day after day, year after year?” I asked myself. “I talk to the same people, I tell them the same things and every company in every city in the world is the same.”

It was at a Chinese exhibition when I first thought the unthinkable. I warmed to my computer-related topic with a Chinese colleague and we found a lot in common. He offered me the chance to set up a common business and I thought to myself, “Why the hell do I have to go on like this?” To tell the truth, I was scared, but for the first time in my life I was truly content. It took us two years and a number of false starts with the wrong products, but finally we succeeded in getting it right. Who dares wins!

DON’T LET THEM EAT AWAY AT YOUR NERVES

My Grandma loves looking at her old photographs. She says memories come flooding backand relives them. She says they are “good’ and “bad’. The former ones make her happy taking her back to the times when she was young and beautiful. The latter stir upsad memories and remind her of the things she would like to change but can’t. My mum often sympathises with our Grandma and tells me we shouldn’t let bad memories eat away atus, we should putbad experiences behindus. We have to always try to live in the present and live for the future. But I think it’s easier said than done.

Our grandparents and parents store upso many memories over the years, good ones and bad ones, that it’s worth trying to write them down or record them. My mother keeps an old photo of me and associatesit withmy early childhood before she divorced my father. Looking at the photos she always smiles and sighs. It suddenly came back to me how fragile and unstable the happiness might be. So when I saw my Grandma looking through the album, I took my notebook and asked her to tell me something about those photos. Of course, they stirred uplots of happy memories and some sad ones too. For example, when she and her husband lost their jobs, my mum was very little and they tried to get along onjust their Social Security checks. She added that happy ones stuck withher forever, though. People try to block outtheir sad memories, but there is no use in doing that because you might forget the good ones. It’s true that you can get an unexpected flashbackto your unpleasant experience, but it can help you learn a lesson or teach others how to avoid it.