Funny Children's Stories. Bilingual Edition

А когда я делал уроки, то перед глазами у меня всё стояла эта поломанная клюшка. Ещё до того, как она сломалась, я подерж

ал её немного в руках. Конечно, она была ужасно красивая. Края у неё не были острыми. Они были закруглены

. И клюшка вся была покрыта каким-то чудесным лаком. А изгибы у неё были такими, что у меня всё холодело внутри. И я подумал, что мне

очень повезло в том, что у нас есть двор, где можно поиграть в хоккей. И что мне повезло, что у нас многим нравится эта игра. И я подумал, что всё это очень здорово.

А ма

мина идея насчёт мокрой спины, ну насчёт того, чтобы раздеваться в подъезде и сушить свою мокрую одежду, мне очень понравилась.

The Hockey Stick

Today we played hockey. In the winter we play hockey very often. Because in the winter it is the most interesting thing we can do. And our winters last for a long time. They last for nearly half a year, from November to March. But sometimes it can snow even in April and October.

Honestly, it is not quite hockey. We do not play on ice. We play on pressed snow. So we play without skates. We just run in shoes or, more often, in felt boots. And if we run in felt boots then we, of course, wear galoshes over them.

Sometimes they make a skating rink for us. But first of all, this happens very rarely, and second, we play in felt boots anyway. We play in felt boots because the ice is uneven. So it is difficult to skate on it. Besides, not everyone has skates.

Today there was no ice in the rink. But we trampled the snow so hard that the puck went over it just fine. It moved very well. It almost slid. And it slid over the snow because our puck is very good.

We make it out of an empty tin can. But not out of a tall can, of course. We make a puck out of a flat tin. And the best tin is one that is opened only a quarter or a third of the way, no more.

If we put something heavy inside and bend the lid back, it becomes a pretty decent puck. And there is no fuss with it. We hide it somewhere right in our yard. And we have never lost it. Probably because no one else has any need for it.

There is another difference between our game and real hockey. We play without hockey sticks. But not because we do not have them. Some of us do have hockey sticks. Using tin metal, we attach an oblong piece of plywood to a wooden stick, thus making a Canadian hockey stick. But not everyone has such a stick. And when someone plays with a hockey stick and someone else, without a hockey stick, it ends very badly for the stick. When the stick collides with a felt boot, it immediately breaks. For this reason, we are afraid to play with hockey sticks. However, if someone has a hockey stick, he still brings it out to the yard. But he brings it just for the warm up. And when we start to keep score, everybody knows that it is better to put the hockey stick aside.

But our hockey net is real. Well, it is almost real. We score goals under a bench. The puck has to pass between the legs of the bench, under its seat. And this is exactly the spot where our hockey sticks most often break. Because when you push the puck under the bench with your felt boot, no hockey stick can withstand it. By the end of December, all our benches are covered with snow. Then we come up with something else.

Today a boy from our yard decided to play with his stick when we kept score. And my friend Gleb Paramonov, with whom I have shared a desk at school since first grade, broke this hockey stick right away.

The problem was that the stick was not homemade. It was a real hockey stick from a store. That was the first time in my life that I have seen a hockey stick like that. The boy who brought it said that the stick was for Russian hockey. It was not straight and thin at the bottom like a Canadian stick. It was round and thick. And it seemed so durable that none of us thought it could ever be broken, especially that quickly.

So the boy who brought the hockey stick started to fight with Gleb. But when he started to fight, I reminded him of the rules we had in our yard. Everyone knows them. If you decide to play with a hockey stick and I break your stick, then I am not responsible for what happened. Well, obviously I am not responsible as long as I did not do it on purpose. That is the rule. And Gleb did not break it on purpose. Everyone saw that.

Well, and of course, after hockey I came home all wet. And my mom did not like it. My mom never likes it when I come home wet. But after hockey, you cannot come home dry. And because after hockey you are supposed to be wet, Mom does not like it when I play hockey. She always wants me to switch to something else.