The amateur film festival in Kula was on 16th and 17th. I ran with "blaženko", of course. Got a lot of miaouws during the projection, and some minor award in the end (mentioning originality or something). Good time, and I didn't even write down what occurred there. Perhaps I met Melanija again, but didn't talk with her, just said hi?
My oto teacher was getting quite a rubbing for giving me a 4 in sixth grade, because I was the very best at the general technical stuff, which is exactly the oto. The reason I got the 4 was a model of a kiosk, which I then did coupled to Borko. For some reason he cut his pieces with a very slanted saw, perhaps worse than 45 degrees, and gave them to me to put together only one day before the deadline. Which I left to be done in the evening, and then there was no way that I could see what I need to do and then find the tools to do it on such a short notice, so we failed together. One of those experiments in group teaching, where all the failures of the method surface immediately and then be taken for success of the method and failure of the participants. Pedagogy at its best clumsy. I didn't really care that I'm not getting Vuk's diploma. But the guy (and the staff) had me on his/their conscience, so I got the Alas diploma and a Tesla and maybe one more. He lettered mine himself with the newly acquired Letraset decals; the others were routinely filled by hand.
(his history was interesting later, he became a local politician, and then among the first sellouts before the word even gained notoriety; his son, a lawyer, was briefly my customer)
The last days of elementary school. All the trouble we caused over the year is getting forgotten. With the competition schedule being what it is, I won't be there for ekskurzija but at least I'll be there for the prom. Though if Tejka would personally ask me to travel with the class, I would probably say yes right away, but, luckily, she didn't. Actually, she's trouble - one day she's all chummy with me, old pals and so that ("and tako to" is a phrase by Minimaks which made it into the vernacular), the next day she screams at me for no particular reason.
Now the trouble with the prom is that I don't have good trousers. Bell bottoms would be preferable, but then I don't have anything half decent. I'm wearing those wrong ones from a year ago. Mom is considering copying the cut from them, but I'm against that - they're too deep and, besides, too short now and narrow in the hips. I've grown. Now the ones that came with the coat are ok in the hips, but are short, so I started wearing them low, on the hips, not on the waist (they are deep), but even so they are too short, and the part that goes below the balls is now somewhere at half my thighs. Awful. And I'm supposed to dance...
Today we (Dragana, Tejka, Lidija and I) shot everyone's prom photos, for the albums. Everyone came into the lab to be photographed. We had two 500w mirrorbacked milk-glass lightbulbs that two would hold at shoulder height, the person would sit, and someone would take the shot. That was about 120 photos, took us a few hours, but at least we had lots of fun doing it. Somehow I managed to sneak a few extra copies of their pictures, plus those of Duca, Bosa, Rencika and Miljka, plus a couple of group shots (me with Miljka and Dragana, for one).
Tejka was worried all day, her mom found cigarettes in her bag.
Now here's an interesting detail: her mother was the chief of the school's kitchen (which was there for the daycare). Dragana and Tejka were supposed to get us something to eat, which the latter solved by giving me 3 dinars to go out and buy something, pogačice (small filo dough layered things, with bit of young cheese inside) - found something and a small can of pašteta. Why we couldn't get something from kitchen? Either it was already closed for the day, or she wanted to avoid meeting her mom or who knows. There are a few unreadable lines in my diary there, I shot the pages too quickly.
So today it was the last day, we'll never meet again. We did go crazy and did a few things we never did before, but still the mood was somber. On one hand yes we're free now, but on the other we're losing each other. Miljka was, crying, chiding me for being silly (the word is "inserious" in serbian). In the end, by irony of it, the last class we had russian. Didn't do much, just kind of talked... by that time we were just sad, didn't feel like doing much of anything, and we silently dispersed after that.