I started some little investigation about the lack of attendance on my birthday. First Oli Boj said she was in all kinds of problems and couldn't possibly make it. Okay, I'm not mad at you, it happened.
Then Rencika and Dragana, first about my haircut (sure enough, school soon, it happens then, higher force). "Too bad, I had to eat all those ćevapčići alone... took me three days". "ćevapčići? Rencika, we should have come!" "Well, I had only two people, Kale and Tejka". "Tejka? She told us she won't be coming! We thought you'd be inviting that other gang, from the corner". Well I called only him and one other guy (who forgot to come); I was almost shamed that I didn't invite more of them, specially with few other birthdays nearby, to which they did invite me.
So part manipulation, part misinformation... and then it occurred to me that "we could defer the whole thing for the doček". "Whom would you invite, speak fast" - "well Zvojko as the host of the previous one, you, Gradivoj... I'd skip the two guys from our class" (the two troublesome ones, the one who was weilding the knife at me and the other one The Bosnian). "How about Patak, true we aren't going anymore, but by then..." - "why not, sure". Then someone came along and I had to leave as the light on my bike was dead, so before sunset.
Kale got a new three-speed bike, that his gastarbajter dad brought from Germany. My 3/4 russian bike was already a bit rusty, with some parts already changed (for hand brake handle, it was done by the local blacksmith, somewhere up the street, where I had the chance to pull the bellows myself and see how it's hammered while it's hot - not the handle, but the thing he was doing at the time; the brake needed just a larger screw). There were maybe two or three more of us, all roughly the same age, and we made a racetrack in the park. We didn't actually race each other, that would be too dangerous, but we timed the circuit for each one of us and memorized the time. There were many sharp curves in the path we chose, some pieces of the track paved, some gravel, some dirt. The result wasn't too bad - what he'd do in 92 seconds, I'd do in 102 to 107. That was some tough bicycling we did then.
It was fun, I learned to control my bicycle in weird situations, and I think I didn't even fall. Our time was improving throughout the summer. Next year, we weren't interested (or Kale wasn't - something wrong with his bike or stopwatch or he just said so).
Saw movie "The happening", which I thought would be about this new form of street art, but no, it was about some beach boys stealing gangsters' cars or some such cheap comedy stuff (ok, the wikipedia now says "four hippies, who kidnap a retired Mafia mob boss, holding him for ransom"). The title song by Diana Ross & Supremes stayed forever, while a year later nobody remembered the film.
28-VI-2020 - 10-XI-2025