Funny Children's Stories. Bilingual Edition

The Wardrobe

Last year we spent the summer in Ukraine. Initially, Mom and Dad wanted us to go to the seaside. But then they found out that everything would be very expensive there. Mom said that the biggest downside would be eating in the cafeterias. And the type of food served there would not be suitable for a child. And that in those cafeterias, even a healthy adult man could get a gastric ulcer.

Mom told Dad that it did not make any sense at all to go to the seaside. But Dad replied that she was saying that because she had never been to the seaside.

I had never seen the sea either, so I asked Dad what is so special about it and why the sea is better than just a river. And Dad said that he did not know how to explain that to me, but the sea is the sea. It cannot be compared to a river. And he would definitely, someday, send me and my mom to the seaside.

We went to Ukraine with Mom's friend Aunt[10] Tamara, who also decided to take her son there for the summer. Aunt Tamara told Mom that she spoke Ukrainian and promised to help us if we had any problems with the language.

When we came to Ukraine, a lot of funny things happened. It was funny when we were still sitting on the platform of the railroad station in Kharkov, where we were waiting to transfer to another train. Mom went to buy tickets and left me and Aunt Tamara to watch over our luggage. Then Mom came back and said that she was not sure whether we would be able to buy tickets before nighttime. And she said that she had had trouble finding the building where they sold tickets. And that the number of the building was fourteen.

Mom suggested that Aunt Tamara should write this number down so that it would be easier for her to find it on the way back. But Aunt Tamara said that she did not need to write anything down because it was an easy number to remember. She said that her son was thirteen years old. So all she needed to do was add one to come up with fourteen.

Later that night, Mom put me to sleep on the platform, right on top of our luggage. A man in a uniform walked past us and said, “Hey, why are you sleeping here?”

Aunt Tamara told us later that he was speaking Ukrainian. And that, from that point on, everyone would speak that way. Aunt Tamara translated what he said to us.

But we understood what that man in uniform was saying even without Aunt Tamara’s help.

At that moment, Mom became very frightened that he might make us leave and started to explain to him that we were waiting to buy our tickets. But that man continued yelling at us, and then he suddenly walked away and never came back again.

After the man in uniform went away, Aunt Tamara said that we should have given him three rubles and he would have left us alone right away.

And Mom continued to worry that they could still make us leave the platform. But then she calmed down. And Mom and I even started to laugh. We started to laugh because we remembered what the man in uniform had said. Even though we understood him, everything he said sounded weird. All his words sounded strange, and he pronounced everything differently[11].

Later Mom told me that, actually, I should not laugh when I hear someone speak differently from the way I do. Because everyone speaks in their own way. “Look,” my mom said, “Ukrainians do not laugh at how we speak. Though it probably sounds funny to them too.”

After that, Mom told me that she was worried that Aunt Tamara would not remember the number of the building where the tickets were being sold because Aunt Tamara has a bad memory. And her memory is bad because a wardrobe once fell on her head. Since then, she has always a bad memory.

When we finally arrived at our final destination, Mom went somewhere to get our luggage, which we had shipped. But when Mom unpacked our luggage, she found that our tin laundry bucket was all bent. It looked so funny that even Mom began to laugh, though she was really worried about how she would wash everything. So she immediately began to write a letter to Dad. She wrote him about what had happened to our bucket. And she asked him what she should do and how she should do the washing.

And every day, Mom asked our landlord, from whom we rented our room, whether he had received a letter from Dad for us. And when the landlord saw our bucket, he asked Mom what had happened. Mom told him how our bucket was ruined. The landlord said that he could quickly fix it. And he did fix our bucket very quickly.

But Mom still worried about why Dad was not writing back to us. She also worried that Dad would worry about our bucket. Even though there was no need to worry about it anymore.

A letter from Dad came two weeks after we left home. And Mom was very happy that a letter finally came from Dad. She read it a few times to herself and to me.

But it turned out that Dad wrote us this letter one day after we left. And as soon as we realized that, we understood that there would be nothing in this letter about our bucket.