What a Face!
The memory of my high school Civil Defense Class teacher suddenly poped up.
It was a retired Colonel, short and round like Nikita Khruschev. Like the President of the Soviet Union, our teacher had a short temper.
Besides the short temper, the round-faced Colonel had a clumsy way of expressing himself, making the whole class laugh till we start having hiccups, accompanied with tears.
I started following our teacher with a notebook and a pen, writing down his unforgettable phrases: "From Me. To ANOTHER stump. Forward. March!"
The most hilarious thing about our teacher was that he failed to understand that we're laughing at him. And his angry outbursts made us laugh even harder.
One day we studied individual gas masks for nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological attacks. The Colonel lined up all boys from our class and commanded, "Put the masks on! Take the masks off! Put the masks on! Take the masks off!" Suddenly the voice changed, "Konstantin! Why didn't you take the mask off?"
Konstantin–the handsomest boy in our class–stood among us like Shiva with a long trunk of his gas mask instead of his nose, reporting from underneath of the mask, "I took it off, Sir!"
Our teacher looked at Konstantin one more time and covered his mouth with his tiny puffy hand in pity, "O-o-o-p-s! What a face!"
The whole class just went into hysterics, repeating the phrase multiple times, but directing it to the Colonel, not to Konstantin.
This is how I got into a habit of collecting unfortunate phrases of the powerful. I can't brag that I was the only one–our whole country was following those not so smart leaders with great attention. Otherwise, we wouldn't get such popular idioms in our vocabulary as, "There is no sex in Russia!" or "We wanted the best for Russia, but we got it as usual."
Recently, I heard on the radio that the higher the positon, the less stress the leaders live under. That seemed odd. It supposed to be the opposite. I remembered the scarlet red face of my Civil Defense Class teacher, and the purple face of another boss, when I told him the truth about his behavior. But psychologists demonstrated the validity of their discovery with the lower level of cortisol in the mouths of presidents, than in the mouths of those, who function on lower levels of a career ladder, trying to please their bosses, to perform better, and to make the ends meet.
After thinking twice, I had to agree: the higher you rise, the more bonuses, praises and pleasers you get, losing gradually the sense of reality. Someone writes your speeches, and someone is happy to do your dishes. Cool!
It doesn't matter how high we go, it's good to remember that it might be a little girl with a notebook and a pen in a crowd. People, who work and live on the lower levels of the life ladder, compensate their stress level by the sharpest sense of humor. They are the ones, who make history, not those, who rule over them!
Unfortunately, that very history is filled not with the smartest and sharpest leaders, but who would refuse from a temptation to squeeze him/herself into the elevator that goes up?!
Those, who are left on the lower level have a benefit to laugh, looking carefully around, "What a face!..."
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