My next episode will be set in 5th grade. In my Russian literature class we were assigned to read the first 20-ish pages of an excerpt of a famous novel. It was a famous novel called Dubrovsky by Aleksandr Pushkin. It’s very vague in my memory now, but essentially it is a story set in the 1800s about a young nobleman named Dubrovsky whose land was confiscated by some powerful aristocrat. Up until then I really did not like reading, but for whatever reason, when I started reading Dubrovsky as a part of my homework I couldn’t stop, so I read the entire thing which took me like all day. (As a side note, I remember the story suddenly just cut off in the end, and at the time I thought it was just because it was only an excerpt of a novel printed in our textbook, but — I just Googled it and it turns out the novel was unfinished in the first place. The reason being, as every Russian person knows, Pushkin lost in a gun duel against Dante over some chick somewhere)
I was really astounded with myself for being immersed in reading for so long and actually enjoying it. In class, we were doing work around Dubrovsky for the rest of the semester, but I finished reading the whole thing on the first day. As a kid, I remember playing video games a whole lot and playing outside with neighbors’ kids, and reading books was a very distant concept for me. It was the kind of entertainment I haven’t yet experienced. I remember being fascinated with Russian history that Dubrovsky was set in. I also remember struggling with many outdated terms and words used in the story. And I vaguely remember flexing the newly acquired vocabulary in front of my parents and peers.