However, for everybody’s conveniance I won’t be using “1337” too often in my writings. Anyway, instead of one bigger topic, today I’m gonna try an alternative format for my posts - I’ll share with you a couple of smaller anegdotes from various moments in my life.
My favourite numbers
My favourite numbers are #41 and (from single digits only) #4. These being my racing numbers from the time me and my brother Antek were racing in go-karts (which deserves a whole different post that one day I’ll make). When it was time to pick the numbers we would enter with, we had no clue which to pick, so dad suggested our gradebook numbers. By the distribution of surnames in our classes it was #3 in both of our cases, so one had to give up and take the following, as dad locked for us #3 and #4. I don’t remember how we resolved it, but the result was I lost and had to take #4.
Next time out it turned out other kids had earlier locked our numbers, so we had to change. The most popular solution at the time was to simply add another digit, so we did just that. Antek took another 3 to get #33 and I was convinced by dad to add 1, hence getting the #41. For the remainder of our adventure with gokarting we remained with those, with one exception on Antek’s side when he was forced to temporarily race with #331.
Because #33 and #41 seemed to us pretty unique, we started to use them whenever there was a need to select a number from between 1-99. This is also why they had made it into our original gametags when we started playing World of Tanks. I liked the nickname “maximus41” so much it became my default gaming pseudonym, and I picked it as my Substack Handle.
The only other person whose favourite numbers I know is my dad. For him them being those he had while playing football (soccer) in junior teams of Clepardia Kraków, #6 and #15.
The sidepod of the kart assigned to me. Referring to my last post, my full name was too long not only in the form, and nobody thought about making the sticker larger.
My little war with our neighbour
Some say it’s typical among Poles to have a quarrell with one’s neighbour. I disagree with those voices, which however didn’t stop my family from getting a few points of contention with people living next to us. But the “argument” I have with our neighbour to the east is in fact pretty peaceful (and wholesome if I’m allowed to say so). You see, the our fence does not divide the whole border and in the little valley part our lawns are accessible by simply walking past the markings. Ever since I started mowing “the scarp” (as we call it), he was always exceeding the border by one width of his lawnmower (about 50 cm). I never asked him why, but I assume he has been doing that for these reasons:
It’s easier for him to maneouvre
He considers the border to be going about half a meter westwards.
The second reason is a bit weird, because when in October of 2021 with my dad we measured the course of the border and we placed the boundary bollard exactly so that there was a straight line from the end of the fence, and I minded not crossing that line ever since. Regardless, both the neighbour and I mow our lawns to the point where we think the border is, thus helping one another by doing a fraction of each other's work.
[picture will be added soon]
Ecological disaster of 2021
In my family under this name are known the events that happened in July of 2021. Antek and I were left home alone for a couple of days, as other family members went on a holiday trip. Everything went fine, but only for the time being. Not too long after the rest departured, Antek started preparing few eggs for us to eat, but before he could finish making some dish, he got distracted by something and I stepped in to do the dishes. I was unaware he was peeling eggs and unintentionally hid them behind cutting board that was drying up. Then my brother returned, but he forgot about the eggs and made something else, which left them exposed to summer heat and rottening. For a day or two we forgot about eggs and the board, placing in front of it cucumbers we intended to eat soon, while cooking for ourselves whatever was in the fridge.
Then, next morning we went to make breakfast and felt a terrible smell in the kitchen. We assumed that the cucumbers somehow rottened, so I went to leave them on our compost while Antek figured out how to air out the kitchen. To do that, he dragged a fan and put it on. Enough to say it was a catastrophic idea, as the bad smell of rotten eggs was blown to every corner of our house, making it unbearable. Alarmed by how horrible it was, we investigated the kitchen closely, eventually finding what caused the problem. We immediately threw the eggs to the compost and killed all the fly larvae that grew there. Because it was far more troublesome than anything Antek or I did before, we called the “vacationers” to seek advice on how to deal with sanitising the kitchen.
[picture will be added soon]
Luckily for us, mum and dad were in good mood, so they only told us what to do to restore order in there. They must’ve had gone from the assumption the smell we experienced was enough of punishment or lesson for us, and great lesson it was indeed. Since then we never wasted any products, always sticking to completing the food preparations from start to finish (and eating immediately). Another aftermath is that since then I can’t stand the smell of raw eggs, because they always remind me what happened. We both also regret blaming the cucumbers.
How I almost died (twice)
There were at least two times in my life I found myself on the verge of losing it. Both of them happened when I was a toddler, so I know about them only because my parents told me. The earlier happened during one of the visits to grandparents on mum’s side in Dębica. Dad was helping in the garden cutting some plants, few other relatives were also nearby, while I was playing nearby and walking around. He was keeping an eye on me from time to time, but it was enough for me to get into trouble. Suddenly, he heard me crying for help. He looked around, but couldn’t see me. Following the sound, he was petrified to find me inside the barrel full of collected rainwater (designed and made by my grandpa). My head was just sticking above the water surface and the only reason why I didn’t drawn was because I held tight to the inner rings that were inside the barrel, the upper with my hands and the lower with my feet. The barrel wasn’t covered by anything because nobody believed a small child could be able to climb it.
The later one occured when we were living in a flat located in an area in Kraków called Dąbie. I was playing next to newborn Antek’s bed, while my mum was in the kitchen just a few steps away. Then I wanted to get a toy placed on the top of a tall cupboard. I was too short to reach it with my hand, so I tried to climb it. It resulted in the cupboard collapsing, but miraculously the bottom shelves were broken and didn’t open, creating a “survival cell” that I fell to, with the upper ones landing on the floor. Mum rushed immediately to find out what happened and was more than relieved to see I crawled out of the cupboard unscathed.
This is the aforementioned room, although the furnishings at the time of it happening was totally different, but I couldn’t find the picture with that cupboard.
A linguistic and a geographical misconception I had when I was a few year old
When I was in kindergarten , I was genuinely convinced Poland bordered England to the northwest, who then was neighbours with Germany. I had a little shock when I checked it in few atlases. Few years later, when I was in grade zero (in here it’s a “bridge” year between kindergarten and primary school - children age six are doing preschool stuff while going to the primary school’s building) one of my classmates “broadened” my and few others’ vocabulary, but he wasn’t interested in laying out the proper pronounciation or spelling. He believed the game he enjoyed playing was called “butterfield” and the the f-word was beginning with “v” in both spoken and written form, which we took from him.
That’s all for today. See you in my other works.
Max
[tłumaczenie pojawi się niebawem]