Found: childhood memories

Classmates are so important when growing up in Russia. Schools are organized differently: usually, you are placed into a class in the first grade, and you stick with the same people for the next 10 years, often, sitting side by side with the same "partner." The experience turns them into family members; even the strange ones end up being yours and you come to love them. The relationships you form have the intensity of summer camp, but if it's a good school, and you find a common link, they're friends for life. Seriously for life. So it happens, that, for example, were I to suddenly locate someone from the 6th grade here, I wouldn't really care all that much. In fact, I have seen people I used to know around, and almost always, I have dodged them just to avoid the awkward smalltalk. And, I know for a fact that I have stood on the T face to face with people who were in my homeroom for 4 years to have them blatantly not recognize me - only affirming the fact that I was the invisible man in high school.


Behold: 6A, about a month before I left. I am the small jew in the left upper corner. My desk partner is the cutie in the second row, third from the right.

Locating people from my old Russian school has brought such a warm nostalgic feeling over me, and all sorts of crazy memories I thought had disappeared for ever flooding back. Childhood grudges, first loves, first disappointments...

And amazingly, they remember me too!

Also amazingly, it turns out that I was the first to start a mass exodus: 2 others left to USA, 2 to Germany, 2 to Sweden, and who knows how many others have become expats as well.

Ahh... This may start a memoir-type trend, because now that a bunch of memories have been retrieved from the Pensieve, I feel I must make a record. Consider this an introduction to my sob story...