Before I get on to the children's antics themselves, I'll quote some statements by our children that prove beyond any doubt their love for us, their parents:
Our daughter in first year, to her mother: "Mummy, I love you almost as much as Comrade Klisarska!"
Our son in sixth year, after I'd finally bought him the big wall chessboard he'd been dreaming of: "Daddy, I love you the most in our whole stairwell!"
Let me point out that we lived in a nine-storey block of flats with 5 stairwells.
Vroom-vroom
Our daughter had just started walking and was babbling a few syllables. One Saturday my wife and I decided the three of us would go for a little drive around the neighbourhood in our brand-new car. Inside it the child looked around with interest, but as soon as I started the car, she burst into tears. My wife moved into the back and began to calm her down:
"Don't be scared, sweetie, this is Daddy's vroom-vroom! Good vroom-vroom, ooh-ooh-ooh, Daddy's vroom-vroom!"
I, the novice driver, only pulled away once the little one's tears had turned to snot, with lots of revs and riding the clutch. Passers-by started turning to look at us, and that calmed our daughter down at once. To this day she loves everyone looking at her.
Twenty minutes later, exhausted, I parked in front of our block. I managed it in only three attempts. Both my ladies were disappointed by our far-too-short drive. On the ninth floor, where we lived, my wife took our sulky daughter out onto the balcony, showed her where our car was down in front of the block and told her:
"There's Daddy's vroom-vroom, but now it has to go night-night! Wave to it and blow it a kiss!" I, too, like Daddy's vroom-vroom, wanted a little night-night. To get some quiet sooner, I decided that this time, as an exception, I would personally switch on the vacuum cleaner, since I was quicker about it.
But when I brought it out to the starting position, our daughter jumped up despite her fear of it, took me by the hand, led me to the balcony, pointed down at our car and said to me:
"Daddy vroom-vroom!" She led me back inside, took her mother by the hand, led her to the vacuum cleaner and started repeating to her:
"Mummy vroom-vroom!"
In the end my wife realised what was wanted and started cleaning with it. So in a single day our child not only got over her fear of the vacuum cleaner and the car, but also brought a certain order to the division of tasks in our family.
Valcho
The same child, just two years later, started to read. Not only books, but anything she clapped eyes on. One day we set off in the car to my parents' country cottage. On the way we stopped at a red light, and our daughter immediately exclaimed:
"Ooh, I didn't know they had surnames too!"
I was still an unconfident driver and it wasn't wise for me to talk, but I asked her:
"Who – they?"
Our daughter replied:
"What do you mean who? The wolves!"
I told my wife to check whether our daughter had a temperature. She didn't. We still couldn't move off, and I asked again:
"Niyka, tell Daddy, what wolves are you talking about? They're in the forest, don't be scared!"
The child went on pondering out loud:
"Of the animals, I think only Zayo-Bayo has a surname – Srednogorski. Metsana is a granny, Ezhko is Bezhko, but I think that's a nickname, not a surname.
"But that Valcho the Wolf's surname is Ivanov – that's something I'm only finding out now!"
My wife and I exchanged anxious glances. It might be best to turn back right now and take the child to a psychologist. The light was still red, and I started wondering where after it I'd be able to do a U-turn.
At this tense moment my wife burst into uncontrollable laughter. This was getting too much for me – maybe the psychologist would have to examine her too, and maybe me as well. I was about to snap at her, but she was giggling and silently pointing at something through the window. I looked over there crossly. On the roof of the building on the right there was a big illuminated sign: "Valcho Ivanov Factory". At that moment both my laughter and the traffic were let loose. For the first time I pulled away with ease and drove like that all the way there. That was exactly when I'd relaxed as a driver.
For the rest of the journey we nearly wet ourselves laughing, listening to our daughter's musings on how she pictured this Valcho Ivanov – in a suit, tie and patent leather shoes, and Kuma Lisa Ivanova – with lipstick, make-up and a parasol to shield herself from the sun.
The Baptism of the Henhouse
When I was little, there was a henhouse in our yard. What I often did was stand outside in front of its wire mesh, dig up a worm or just grab some grass and wave whatever I was holding in front of them. Left-right and up-down, in the shape of the Christian cross. The hens would crowd behind the mesh and start making the same movements as me with their heads. That's how I "baptised" them. The cockerel never once crossed himself. He was always telling off his hens and pecking them on the comb. In my opinion, he remained an Antichrist to the end – purely because of his cursed jealousy.
Our Son's Triumph
One Sunday my wife really got stuck into our son over his maths. He was already in fourth year and, in her view, falling behind. She made him read aloud the problem they'd been given for homework. Our son coped with the text, which was, and I quote: "If it is now 12 noon, can we hope that the sun will be shining in 36 hours?" My wife asked him:
"Did you understand what the problem is asking you?"
He answered her quite honestly:
"So far I've only been concentrating on the reading, I don't even know what it's about!"
"All right. Now go to the children's room, think about how to solve it, and when you're ready, come back to me in the kitchen. But you should know I'll want you to explain to me how and why you solved the problem that way!"
A little later, passing close to the children's room, I overheard the following conversation between him and his big sister:
"But how am I supposed to know if there'll be clouds?"
She replied almost at once:
"Well, think!"
"What am I, a weatherman?"
"Oh come on, dummy, don't you get that 36 hours after 12 noon it'll be night?"
"And how do you know?"
"Think some more, will you! After 24 hours, what time will it be?"
"Um, 12 noon again, I think."
"And after another 12 hours?"
A moment later our son not only got it, but ran off to the kitchen. I followed him and witnessed how, after he'd argued his case well to his mother about why exactly he'd solved the problem that way, she was positively ecstatic:
"Well done, sweetheart! Mummy is so happy that you actually turned out to be very clever! God, how wrong I've been until now! Well done, darling!"… and so on. Good thing she hadn't heard his original solution to the problem: "What am I, a weatherman?"
Baby in a Bottle
In 1972 my future wife and our future matron of honour told me, laughing, a story from their childhood.
The two of them had been inseparable friends ever since nursery school, and somewhere around third year it occurred to them that, a long time from now, they'd have children by their future husbands. Since the two of them loved each other very much, they decided that even before that they'd have a child of their own. They'd raise it in secret in the shed in one of their yards, which nobody had gone into for ages, and there was even a stove in there. They knew that two things were needed for this purpose: menstrual blood and sperm, which, when mixed together, make a baby.
They agreed as follows: as soon as one of them got her period, she'd put a few drops of it into a little penicillin bottle and seal it with its rubber stopper. And then the other would steal some sperm from her big brother, and in the shed in question they'd pour the contents of the two bottles into a third, which they'd wrap up warm, the way their grannies did to turn fresh milk and starter into yoghurt, and then they'd check on it often and move it into a bigger container.
When one of them "got it" in sixth year, she filled her long-prepared little bottle and sealed it with its stopper. She went straight to her friend and asked her whether she still remembered their agreement about the baby. The friend was delighted by the good news and replied that she'd do her best to have filled hers by tomorrow at the latest, so that the material in the first one wouldn't go off.
At that moment the two of them realised that a man's sperm comes out of the same place as his urine, i.e., there was going to be a problem. After long deliberation they reached the conclusion that men perhaps have some sort of little tap with which to switch which of the two things comes out. The friend with the period asked the other one to take her big brother's sperm in complete secrecy, at night, without him noticing at all, so that he wouldn't later go and claim paternity.
The next morning they met straight at the shed. One was carrying her little bottle, and the other anxiously explained that last night she'd accidentally burst into the outdoor bathroom without knocking and found her brother there having a bath. His head was all soaped up and he hadn't seen her. The moment was very convenient, especially as she had the bottle on her, but however closely she examined her big brother's anatomy, she couldn't see any little tap.
And so their whole project fell through.
Now I think that maybe back then, in the Hadzhi Dimitar neighbourhood of Sofia in the sixties, the idea of the test-tube baby was born. To our Bulgarian shame, however, it didn't come off for lack of some silly little tap. That's how we've always been – we always miss some little detail that in the end turns out to be the most important.
