I guess this would be the day when Veljko returned from Czechoslovakia with a bunch of pictures he took there, already developed somewhere. The grafitti ("Lenin, wake up, Brežnjev got insane and quite fucked up your ideas" was the best), the confused people, the soviet soldiers bewildered on their tanks. They were told they were going to be welcomed with flowers, as they were to liberate the oppressed people from a not-people's regime. Instead they were welcomed with "Rusy, tachnete domou" ("Russians, go home", though I don't think the verb was "go"). He's seen soldiers crying, heard of some committing suicide. He's been with us a whole afternoon, telling all he's seen and heard.
My birthday was the day before, but I didn't appreciate the power of advertising, and I wasn't too convincing when inviting people, so nobody came.
It was about time (or maybe the year before) when I grew out of my last school uniform. I didn't feel like wearing one anymore, and thought that somehow I'd weasel my way out of it - some frajers would appear without one from time to time, claiming it was being washed or damaged and waiting for repairs - but then took the other approach: it'd be an uniform, of the prescribed cloth, but different. How different - well, the buttons wouldn't be in the middle, but about 12cm to the left, something between the russian shirt and some kind of dragoon's uniform. The taylor was some woman in that novogradnja on the other side of the šećerana park, near the obdanište, mom knew her from somewhere. She was also amused with the request, finally doing something different, even supplied some shiny, yellow metal buttons.
It worked charmingly, even Ivka couldn't object, and I even acquired some fame for being original again. While still satisfying the form.
I wonder how many times I did this kind of trick in the following decades... Didn't even consider it a trick, I guess, it became my regular way of doing things.