Funny Children's Stories. Bilingual Edition

Может быть, у меня так рот и щёки устроены? Может быть, они у меня как-то особенно приспособлены для того, чтобы улыбаться?

В это вр

емя я вспомнил, как наша математичка рассказывала нам про Болгарию. Ну, о том, что когда там говорят «нет», то кивают головой. А когда говорят «да», то вертят головой вле

во и вправо.

И я подумал вот о чём. Если в Болгарии такие чудеса возможны, то, может быть, есть другие страны, где в чём-нибудь другом происх

одит всё наоборот. Вдруг есть такая страна, где, когда ты улыбаешься, это хорошо, а когда ты не улыбаешься, это плохо. И если така

я страна есть, то я хотел бы об этом знать. Просто я хотел бы знать об этом. Тогда мне было бы легче на свете жить.

Pygmies

Today we had a homeroom session. Actually, a few days ago we knew that we would soon have a homeroom session. Because someone eavesdropped as our Russian literature teacher was being told off by our principal for not having it every month. It turned out that we had not had homeroom for a long, long time.

And those of us who were not doing well in school became a little bit nervous. The guy who was nervous the most was Pudovkin. He was usually picked on more often than anyone else.

The very first day, when Pudovkin showed up in our classroom, we gave him the nickname Pud. Not just because of his last name. Pud is a very big guy. His fists are especially big. They are as heavy as a pood.* So Pud certainly lives up to his nickname.

Pud always sits in the back row. He sits there because only in the back are there desks large enough to fit him.

He is used to everyone blaming him for something. When his name is mentioned on any occasion, he replies from the last row, “Why Pudovkin? I didn’t do anything.”

He says it so often that our teachers have a ready comeback for him. Most often they answer, “It's not good that you did not do anything. In school, you must learn!”

The person who makes fun of him the most is our math teacher. As she sees him there, dozing off in the back, she comes up to him and loudly says, “Pudy!”

Pud shudders, raises his head and looks at her, astonished. And the math teacher curtseys in front of Pud, spreads out her skirt, and says, “Hellooo!” And each time, it sounds very funny. After our math teacher makes a curtsey and says “Hellooo!” to Pud, she takes him by the collar and drags him to the blackboard.

And at the blackboard, we witness a very funny scene. She starts to ask him, “Tell us, Pudy, where are all the Bs? Where are all the Cs?” Then she takes him by the collar again, rubs his nose into the blackboard, where the formulas are written in chalk, and says, “Here are all the Bs! Here are all the Cs!” And when our math teacher rubs Pud's nose into the blackboard, we laugh so hard that tears stream down our faces.

Afterwards, our math teacher becomes tired of dragging Pud around. So she lets him go, saying, “Get out of here, you dummy!”

Once, after this happened, Pud rushed to the door. But the math teacher yelled, “Where are you going, Pudy?!” And Pud stopped, not knowing what he should do next. And the math teacher said, “Get out of here! Back to your desk!”

Usually, all these scenes end the same way. As Pud walks back to his desk, the math teacher says, “Wretched idiot! Bring your Mamsell here tomorrow.” This means that she wants Pud to have his mother come to school the next morning.

Once, after she said “Bring your Mamsell here tomorrow,” she asked him whether he understood what she said to him. And Pud said “yes”, but he shook his head “no.”

Of course, we all guessed what he meant by that. He answered “yes” because he understood what the math teacher told him. But he shook his head “no” because he was scared to even think of telling his mom about all that.

And the math teacher, of course, noticed this right away and told Pud that he spoke like a Bulgarian. It turns out that in Bulgaria, everything is backwards. When they say “no,” they nod. But when they say “yes,” they shake their heads from side to side.

Well, anyway, today Pud became very nervous as soon as he heard the news about homeroom.

But Pud was not the only one. Usually, we expected that Pud would be scolded, and everything would end at that. But this time nothing special had happened to Pud. And because nothing special had happened to Pud, everyone became nervous. Everyone tried to guess what our teacher would talk about. And I too became a little bit nervous.

And so the time came for our homeroom session. Our homeroom teacher — our Russian teacher — entered the classroom, greeted us, stood near the first row of desks, crossed his arms, moved his glasses to his nose, looked at us over the rim of his glasses, raised his pencil, and said, “Some students behave like pigs. For example, Pudovkin.”