A non-rainy rainy Sunday from a 15-year-old’s diary
It was Sunday, the 14th. A really sunny and bright Sunday in this part of the world.
Probably just like all the other Sundays in the year because I had to sit home and study. More stressful than the other Sundays as there were only five more days left until school’s out for the summer. For the first time in my life, I knew there was no chance of having the average of 5,00. I knew I would have some fours, even one 3, as I managed to screw up chemistry bigtime. But I was trying to get myself a 4 in math. One 3 and two 4s sounded much better than two 3s and one 4. So, I was stuffing my brain with sines and cosines; as I had to present the laws of trigonometry to the whole class. Nobody cared that trigonometry was voted out too hard for the first grade. I was doing everything to re-gain my pride and reputation as a knowledgable person. In the first semestre, I got to 4,53 average without any problems; but know what I had in math? A 2! A big fat 2, a proof that I was only getting by, solving the easiest of the assignments in a test, while others looked just like a bunch of undecypherable riddles dancing on the square paper in front of me. So, even though I gained 3 4s and one 3 during the second semestre, even though I had turned into a turbo-charged machine designed solely for improving math skills, using one 60-page textbook per week and barely even doing anything other than watching Viva Zwei while studying; that wasn’t enough, I had to fix my grade from the first semestre.
I made a quick break from studying to watch World cup 1998. It was held in France and Brazilians, my favourites, with my favourite footballer ever, Bebeto, on board were defending the champions’ title they won in USA four years earlier. Our national team, still called Yugoslavia back then, was in it too, in group with Germany, Iran and USA. Their first match took place on that sunny Sunday, in St.Etienne, at the Stade Geoffroy Guichard. It was so boring that it was later given the “award” of the most uninteresting game of the whole tournament. We won when the legendary Siniša Mihajlović (Sinisa, Pils leeeeit naiibolieee)scored from a free kick, which was, dare I say, expected as it was his style. However, Iranians turned out to be a promising team, they were rough, tough and dangerous, especially Ali Daei (the evil guy with ‘tache), Karim Bagheri and their most famous striker, Khodadad Azizi. Mr. Azizi looked really funny and his hair was out of place, my mom immediatelly nicknamed him “Flying Cockroach”. And he was fighting like a cat that was given a huge amount of valeriana. The game was amusing solely because of him and because of the idiotic RTS commmentator who was frenetically repeating “Bagheri….Azizi..Bagheri…Azizi, Azizi!”, which my school mates were so amused with that they were repeating it randomly throughout both classes and breaks during our last week of school. In fact, as far as I can remember, some professors begged them to stop. Oh well, at least the class was into something else than that Australian teenage TV-series everyone was obsessed with. I got sick with how Anita and Drazic were supposed to be together ever and ever, how Drazic was cool because he was a bad boy and how these two were even better than some Nick and Judy couple earlier in the series.
So, the sunny Sunday was a wasted day in many ways. I still had some math to do after the game was over and the only thing that was distracting me for it was biology. We had to prepare for a plant recognition practice on Tuesday, the 16th which was to determine our final grades. I knew that I would have a 5, anyway and I was able to recognise the most of the plants when I was 8 years old already, but either way, I took another look at the herbarium and I was ready.
Within the next couple of days, I gained a 4 in math and 5 in biology. Brazil played against Morocco and Bebeto scored a goal. Our famous Latin professor, Mirjana Maskareli got a boquet of flowers from 1-2, from my class and she got out of the class ten minutes earlier in order not to be seen with those flowers. She had to keep her reputation of an evil heartless woman, even though this almost made her cry. The last thing I wrote on the blackboard to confirm my grade for the year was Ego et tu amici eorundem puerorum sumus. And Maskareli taught us to sing Gaudeamus igitur. The song freaked me out and I could not believe that we’re happy to end the school year and that we’re supposed to sing “nos habebit humus”. After we had nothing else to study, Milanka and I went on a long bicycle ride and she had this amazing racing bicycle and I had my bad one which was doomed from the day one. One of my tyres went flat and I had no spare tyre. Then it started raining. There was a thunderstorm. I made an angry remark that we should have gone cycling on Sunday, because it was sunny.
Not all the aspects of that Sunday were sunny. But even when it wasn’t sunny, the sun was about to shine and it was about to chase all the dark, hopeless clouds and shine for many years to come. And it still is shining, sometimes more, sometimes less bright. And even though I often see minor clouds in the background every now and then during the recent couple of years (an important note: some people deny the existance of those dark clouds no matter how clear the evidence is); they’re not too heavy and not too dark and I have found a way to erase them from my vision, or at least make them semi-transparent. And they aren’t preventing the sun from shining. And that sun has been shining constantly ever since the ice-age was over.
And it was over on that particular Sunday.
I will always be tottering somewhere in the back, in the shadows, almost invisible – on a bicycle with one bad tyre, wearing just one shoe, trying to catch up, falling down in the mud, suffering from unexplainable sadness every now and then, getting straight into a brick wall and breaking it with my head. Everyone else will be riding around in limos, using the posh brand of computers, getting from here and there, everyone else will be loud. I will never even open my mouth. Someone has to be quiet and ride a bicycle in the summer thunderstorm.
