Take, for example, my daily interaction with my fellow Muscovites. Russians love to make what Westerners might consider unwarranted observations to strangers. I can usually laugh about it, enjoy it, or, on a bad day, ignore it. Grumbling old women and inebriated men are part of the scenery here, and it does not do to get upset.
But in my present mood, I feel a deep moral obligation to argue with anyone who offends me. This, I might add, is practically a full-time job.
I can't say I would ever actually enjoy having some nasty babushka yelling at me in the park. But my reaction the other day was little short of violent.
I was out walking my dog Sasha, when a particularly cantankerous specimen came up to me and began lecturing me about the length of Sasha's leash. "Too long," was her verdict.
Since the other 20 dogs in the park were running loose, I did not consider this a fair charge. So I stopped, looked her in the eye, and said, "Are you trying to ruin my day? Is that your goal? Are you so miserable you can't stand to see other people having fun?"
Her expression changed from outrage to anxiety. But I was just getting started. As she turned away I pursued her, keeping up a constant harangue: "Why do you think you can talk to people like that? What is wrong with you?" She began walking faster and faster, until I finally gave up.
Calming down, I was appalled at my lack of restraint, but at least I could console myself with the thought that there was one babushka who probably wouldn't be bothering anyone else for a while.
I did approximately the same thing, to the great embarrassment of a friend of mine, at a movie theater last weekend. I was sitting on a bench in the lobby reading a newspaper when the attendant came up and said, "The waiting room is upstairs."
In a perilously calm voice I said to her, "Am I bothering you?" "Yes, you're leaning on our work of art," she said, pointing to a poster board covered with ads for the movie.
"This is a work of art? Then why do you have ads on it? And why is there a bench here if we are not supposed to sit on it?"
She was getting annoyed, but my friend was mortified. I did manage to throw a sarcastic "Have a nice day," over my shoulder as I was dragged up the stairs.
The point is, this country is wearing me down. Whatever nerves I had are frayed to the utmost, and I am counting the hours until my plane to Boston.
But what do people who live here all the time do? I have had countless discussions with Russian friends on this very topic.
"You take everything too much to heart," they say in soothing tones as I sputter about the latest outrage. "You have to overlook the little things, or you'll go crazy."
But I'm afraid I'll get so used to letting the little things go that I won't know a big thing when it comes up and hits me on the head. I can envision becoming so calloused by living here that I will no longer be able to feel a thing.
Maybe that wouldn't be so bad, after all.
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Remind me later.