As a young child, I tried to find my place in the world alongside others. I had wanted to find something I was exceptionally good at.

I had tried sports, I had tried musical instruments, I had even tried learning languages, but nothing clicked.

My classmate had an Idea.

"Perhaps," she said, "you are not meant to be exceptional by yourself, perhaps you are meant to find an exceptional husband?"

Now, this thought wasn't particularly popular in the former USSR. Being your own man and woman was very important, marriage was taken seriously and love was not something you read about in a book- it was real. We were sure of it.

Still, I wasn't adverse to the idea. There were a few potential 'husbands' in my class. I just had to make them see that.

My first attempt was during the play time. (yes, we had play time!)

Mommy and Daddy game was just us imitating what we thought our parents did- work and eat. And then we would make other kids be our children and boss them around. Sex was not discussed. It was not known. I had a neighbor friend who fought with me when I told him all children came out of women. He was absolutely positive that boys came from men. His dad sat him straight. He said 'son, I love you dearly , but no man in his right mind would volunteer for that much self inflicted pain.'

In any case, my first attempt at husbandry came to nothing.

I was barking up the wrong tree.

I don't believe the kid meant it quite like that, but what did I know? If sex wasn't discussed you better believe that homosexuality wasn't either.

For my second attempt I got more creative.

I wrote a poem to the boy I liked.

I think it was something like this (roughly translated)

'I think I might just like you

And you might like me too

So why don't you come and climb with me

A tree or maybe two.'

So, it wasn't exactly Shakespeare. He didn't have to laugh his way off the fence.

This was double humiliation. I had lost at husbandry again, and found out I was terrible at poetry.

And so for my last attempt I went the opposite route.

This was during a gym class while we were climbing 'kanat'.

I said "be mine, or else!"

He picked "else" and pulled out his own scissors.

Oy vey.

Fearing that this kind of unrequited love would follow me around for the rest of my life I turned to the only person who could possibly shed a light on what I was doing wrong.

I went to a fortune teller. (An older neighbor with an addiction to Turkish coffee)

She made me drink coffee too.

Grosser than gross that coffee was. I was spitting for days.

She turned the cup over and when it was dry she turned it back up and read my fortune.

She looked at me and said 'You are going to be very famous."

I said, yes, but am I going to find an exceptional husband? Focus lady, focus!

She looked again at the cup as if it was under a microscope, and told me there was a glint of hope, but not a very big one and not for very very very very very very very very long time.

Still there was hope.

Discouraged, but not disheartened I sat and waited for the very very very very very very very very long time to be over.

And then my sister came along and suggested we paint the walls of our bedroom.

Which we did.

And then our parents came home.

They were not pleased. Can't say why, we did a pretty nice job on that wall. At least my sister and I thought so.

The next day I was expecting some kind of punishment, ( to be sent to a gulag, or sold into slavery, or worse - sent to a summer camp) but instead we were greeted with this-

wall to wall our bedroom was covered in paper and we had new paints and paint brushes.

Fresh Prince of Bell Air was wrong when he said 'parents just don't understand.'

By the way, speaking of husbands, and rings- I finally finished the one I started few months ago (ring, not husband). I had posted it without stones set in, and now it is finished- and here it is!

and a closer look

Cheers!

Tired of jumping the rope I decided to try my hand, excuse me, my brain at languages.

I figured if my whole family was good at languages, I should be too.

That's my mother, Professor of English language at a university. You'd think English would have been the language I would have learned first, but my mother refused to teach me. Go figure.

"Hi Carla? Do you know what happened to Marco? Yes! He cannot come to the park for a week."

My sister went to an Italian school. She spoke Italian 24/7. You'd think I'd pick up some of what she was saying, but no.

"Do you know what happened to Marco? Yes! He cannot come to the park for a week."

My dad even picked up a little Greek from my sister's godfather. But not me.

I sat and stewed in my Russian.

I did speak Georgian, but two languages did not count.

Lenin spoke five languages- why couldn't I get at least three? I wouldn't use them to cause a revolution, honest I wouldn't.

My parents finally got me a tutor for Italian, so I could at least communicate with my own sister. Also they wanted me to translate as she was quickly forgetting Russian and Georgian altogether and they needed someone who could translate letters from the school.

One day they got a letter from the Italian school, and it started like this.

"Genitori di..." (parents of....)

My parents looked at one another, my English professor mother scratched her head and asked my father "why do they think we are janitors?" Remember this was happening during a prehistoric time of no cell phones, no internet and no google translate. Desperate, they finally had to ask my tutor to translate.

I lasted for a month with my tutor. This was my achievement.

I was supposed to say "My sister bought a bottle."

Guess what I ended up saying? Yeap. "My sister is a bottle."

My tutor quit that day. She actually pretended she was moving to another country.

I would not have suspected anything if my French tutor had not come up with the same excuse few month earlier.

We moved to the US, and here I had to learn English. I knew some allready as my school in Moscow made it mandatory to speak at least one foreign language- KGB liked their possible recruits to blend in with foreigners. No, I never got to spy for any country. If you haven't figure out by now why I was never considered a legitimate spy material, stop reading this blog.

Still with me?

Okay.

I have always regretted not having learned Italian. Therefore I was extremely pleased to see a mysteriously installed Rosetta Stone on my computer(it is legal, no need to call Rosetta Stone police).

Like a good student I studied every day for a week.

Rosetta Stone-"I understand. I am a girl."

Me- I am understand. I have a girl.

Rosetta Stone-"I Understand. I Am a girl."

Me- I am understand. I have a girl.

Rosetta Stone-"I understand. I understand.

Me- I am understand.

Rosetta Stone- words I cannot repeat.

Me- ?

I don't need to translate this, do I?

In my previous posting, I attempted to explain all the things I tried to do before I decided to become a designer.

On top of my musical escapades, I also tried my hands (and feet) at sports. After all I grew up in a Soviet Union, the land of Olympic athletes, it wasn't out of the realm of possibilities that I could excel at a sport. At least one sport.

So I started where every girl started. At a gymnastics class.

My leotard was specially brought for me from Hungary. I stood out, and although I might have thought being an individual was a good thing, the rest of the country did not. No one likes a show off.

They got rid of me by making me do a somersault....right out of the window

Next I took up tennis.

And I would have been good at it too

If I hadn't treated tennis balls like weapons of mass destruction.

Tennis didn't work out quite as my parents hoped. Noticing that I was being overly physical with my sports, my mother had a brilliant idea of signing me up for karate. Where did she find a karate instructor I have no idea, but he was a an excellent teacher. Especially when it came to karate chop.
I might have overdone it a bit....

Chastised for breaking dinning room furniture, I was sent out to join a soccer team. Soccer is what a proper Football game is called all around the world, except in the US. It's called Football because there are feet involved dammit. And a head from time to time. But nowhere are hands involved- in fact using your hands is a penalty. American football is not football- it's kick a weird shaped ball once and then cradle it in your arms for the rest of the play. How is that Football?

Anyhow, don't I look cute? I was a goalie.

But not a very good one.I was bored out of my mind for 90 % of the game. Kind of like I am now when I try to watch a match on TV. Manchester United- you were pitiful.

You'd understand if you saw our team ( by the way, I am not knocking women's soccer- our team was mostly male)

You would think I would stop here and go home, but no, I tried again.

I tried running

The important thing was that I tried....

Hey, some people can run for hours, others (me) need a motivation (someone chasing me with a gun) That did actually happen once in Chicago - I ran like I'd never run before.

I tried swimming

Pitiful, eh? Grew up on the sea side and I'm scared of pools.

So I wasn't going to be the next Maradona. On the bright side no cocaine addiction or Hand of God. (ask Gives about it, if you don't know). Nor was I going to be the next Navratilova, although I was dangerously close to becoming another Mcenroe. I also tried to become the next Peggy Flemming, but it was so pitiful, I couldn't bring myself to draw it. Lets just say, I can only skate in one direction. In any case all of this was quite disheartening. I took to brooding silently in my room with drapes drawn, listening to Shostakovitch's String Quartet No. 8 in C minor. I was on my way to becoming disillusioned eight year old.

But then my sister asked me if I wanted to go play 'elastic' in the park, and I was over it.

This actually is a fun game/exercise. Game when I was young, exercise now.

The way to play this is with teams of people. But if people are unavailable, thin tress will do.

Two people stay inside the elastic and stretch it out. The game starts at ankles and goes all the way up to ears. I've never been able to jump higher than number five. But two of my classmates went up to number seven.

It's a fun game. The easiest jump is to jump in one place on one side of the elastic three times and then put one foot in and jump three times, then follow the first foot on the inside of the elastic, then right foot goes out of the elastic and jump three times. When the left foot follows the right foot, jump twice and then back to repeat the whole thing and then do it by jumping one time. And then progress to knees and so on.

When one person messes up, they have to take the place of one of the standing people and that person gets to jump instead. My sister and I practiced with trees instead of people. Easier this way, no one gets bored.

Here's my feeble attempt to explain the jumping thing.

Level 1- the whole body is involved.

Level 2- one foot, and then at 4 where a waist should be, the elastic is held in a fist.Only professionals should do this. I so wish this was an actual sport- I might have been a champion...if I could get past level 5.

If anyone is at all interested to see how the game is played, do leave a comment and if enough people ask, I will post a video.

All this talk of body parts....hehem...stay tuned for part 3 of how I decided to become a designer. Yes, there's more!