Tuesday, November 24, 2009

MJ's in Heaven, Now

I go to my friend, Masha’s, birthday party. Worried about the lack-of-present all the way down the metro (she lives at the end of one of the lines, about 45 minutes from my place; a solid hour away from the Kremlin), I finally decide to stop by one of the flower kiosks and buy some roses. I see some that are not too horrible ($2.50 a pop) and not too romantic (they had an orange-y tinge to them). “Can I have 5 of those, please?” I asked the lady. (You can only bring even numbers of flowers to funerals.)

“These? Why would you ever want that kind of rose? Look, you can get these crimson ones for the same price.”

There is a babushka who had been talking to the woman earlier. She mutters from my elbow: “Oh, yes, those are really nice roses, those are.”

“Sure, fine,” I answer the seller.

“Or you could go with these – these are probably the most romantic.” – “Oh, so romantic, romantic,” the senile old woman repeats. –

“Whatever you suggest is fine with me, really,” I tell the woman.

“Ok.” She picks some out. “Would you like to put them in a…whatever the thing is called…it’s just called a “packet” in Russian?” I nod. Get my roses and my change.

The old woman’s still muttering as I leave the kiosk: “Oh, such beautiful roses. So romantic. She’s going to be so happy. So romantic.”

I haven’t been to Masha’s since last summer, and I actually go into the wrong entrance to her building. It takes me until I knock on the door (which looks EXACTLY the same as hers) on the fifteenth floor and hear a strange man go “Who’s there?” that I realize my mistake. Finally I get to the right apartment, and sheepishly pass over the roses, and don my little Soviet Pioneer boy costume.

It was a costume party. And I was a six-year-old. With romantic roses.

5 comments:

S.H.S said...

you man-in-training, you!

mempula

Andrew said...

Speaking of which, I keep looking for the new episode of Top Chef. No one has uploaded it on to youtube. I cry at this blatant refusal to break copyright law.

Monica said...

Was she so happy when she saw the beautiful roses that were so romantic?!

I'm starting to think we have some pretty normal people over here in the USA compared to the ones you keep running into...lol!!

Paul and I have been watching The Next Iron Chef. Have you seen that show? It was really good! The finale was Sunday night and the guy who won was the one I wanted to win! I was very excited!! We're hooked on the Food Network. Paul loves the show Diners, Drive-ins, & Dives.

Kara Dugas said...

I got this exact same post in an email a week ago. Cheater.

Andrew said...

Monica: That's new to me, but I watched about a season and a half of "Next Food Network Star" -- of which the first season winner is the host of Diners, Drive-ins, and dives. That is a very dangerous show to me because I always jones for whatever horrible food he's eating when I see it...

Kara: As I wrote in the email, "You heard it here first!" It's a principle of creative economizing...actually...I had just run out of posts so I threw this one up to fill up air time. It's like a rerun...