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!