He waved his hands at us. Any wrong move could kill him! Then the seniors shouted to him, “Okay Ivan that’s enough. Get out of there!”

      Twenty minutes later, Ivan was on the ground. Our seniors began to shake his hand, saying, “Good for you! Now you’re a real man!”

      Terminator turned to us, “And you, young people, watch and learn!”

      After such lesson, we threw away our pistols and began to check “who was a real man among us”. We started doing crazy and dangerous things like jumping from one garage to another.

      Three years later, my friends and I were sitting on a roof of the house which was built by that crane. It was sunset and from the roof we could see the lights of the whole district and the dense smoke from the pipes of the plant which occasionally made a terrible noise much like an engine of a huge plane. We were drinking some beer (although we were only 15), playing the guitar and sang some songs. Suddenly, feeling a little dizzy from the alcohol, I looked at the house nearby and said, “I bet you guys I will jump from this house to the one over there!”

      Between the houses there was a big hole, which was one and a half meters (about 5 feet). The building on the roof of which we were was twelve floors, and the one I wanted to jump on was ten.

      For a moment I thought, “Maybe it is a bad idea.”

      But my friends insisted, “Come on, Nikita, jump once you said!”

      My task was to jump over that hole between the houses. I didn’t think about anything. My heart started beating fast, I felt the adrenaline rush in my blood, I could see only the objective: to jump over it and stay alive. I took my courage in both hands, ran as fast as I could and jumped. The last thing I heard was the sound of the broken roofing slate under my legs. I lost my conscience and then, 5 minutes later, I found myself in the attic. I was lying for a minute or two and heard the guys laughed, “Are you alive, Batman? Come on, get out!”

      I climbed onto the roof and when I saw the hole that I had made in the roof, I began laughing with my friends.

      By that time we were only 15 years old, but we knew all the attics, roofs and basements of all 9-storey buildings in our neighborhood.

      We constantly put our lives at risk and didn’t think about the consequences of our actions.

      The Next “Real Man”

      There was a huge construction area in front of the house where I lived: a new 9-storey house was being built. The working crane was like a sculptor, finalizing its work on it’s another “masterpiece” in our neighborhood. That day was a day-off for the workers, and the guys from my district used this moment to check which one of them was a “real man”.

      The next “candidate” was Gosha, the Terminator’s brother. You will not believe what he did! He got to the top of an unfinished house, tied the “sausage” (that’s how builders call a pipe-shaped heat-insulating material, which is put in the open spaces between the blocks and is flimsy) to a piece of metal, threw the other end of the rope out of the window and started descending down from the 9th floor! Everybody was watching this frightening and exciting show of a guy, whose life depended on that rope. As he got to the 6th floor, the guys started shouting, “Come on man! There’s not much left!”

      Suddenly, something happened and he started falling down! Everybody thought that it was the end of his life, but, gladly, that wasn’t the case! He flew for about two floors and, thanks to his strong hands, he managed to clutch back to the rope and successfully get down! Everybody breathed a sigh of relief that everything went fine. That’s how Gosha proved that he was deserved to be called the Terminator’s brother.

      The Elevator

      One day, my friends and I were hanging out in the streets. The sky was filled with grey clouds and some-time later it started raining. That’s why we got to one of the 9-storey buildings and had a “brilliant” idea.

      We did not want to fall behind our seniors and we decided to prove that we were “real men”. There were ten of us and we all huddled up in the elevator on the eighth floor. We were actually packed like sardines. It was so inconvenient that we could hardly push the button of the first floor. When the elevator started moving, we started jumping actively and all together.

      The elevator was designed for four people max, not for ten guys jumping crazily. So, after several seconds there was an emergency stop. The light turned off. The darkness was all around us, we heard a strange noise from the upstairs. It sounded like the metal rope which was holding us was cracking and it seemed that we could fall down the elevator shaft any second possible. Everyone stood still not knowing whether we would stay alive. Suddenly, the cabin started shaking and we thought that the lift was to become our coffin in a few seconds. The grinding sound of the elevator was the final accord of our life. But, luckily, the light turned on, the lift started working properly and we got to the first floor. When the elevator doors opened, we saw people waiting for us. We pushed each other out of the cabin. They started yelling at us, saying, “Because of people like you, we had to walk up to the ninth floor, idiots!” We were laughing, got out of the elevator and ran into the street. We were happy that we stayed alive and started enjoying every single moment of our precious lives

      Friendly Sparing

      As the time went on, we were growing up. In our neighborhood we had a lot of young people. The district was like a machine, creating more and more small and large criminal groups from twenty to one hundred young men. Their parents were ordinary people. The children, seeing their parents work hard for a small salary, wanted to find a better way of life. So, it was easier to steal a pager or to beat up somebody and take the money than to find a job.

      There were only twenty-five people in my group. At that time, most of our senior guys were in the army and some of them started drinking and using drugs. By the way, those people who were drug addicts had always been punished to the fullest extent of the “street law” in our neighborhood.

      There was a guy in the senior group, whose nickname was Bugs Bunny. He got such a nickname because of his teeth. They looked like ones of the famous American cartoon character. The guys got the information that his friend Bunny was taking drugs. The whole gang (about 10 people) caught him in the streets the very next day. The guys started beating up Bugs Banny so furiously, that they knocked out his cartoon teeth. He screamed, “I won’t do this anymore, please, forgive me!”

      But they did not listen and went on kicking him. They stopped only when he lost his consciousness.

      I asked Ivan (the Terminator), “Why did you beat him up so severely?” “For being hooked on heroine, he replied.”

      I remember that we always tried to lead a healthy lifestyle. Quite often we took our boxing gloves and went to a place, where there were no people. We had real sparring over there. The rules were: as soon as the first blood appeared, the fight was over. Usually the fighting did not last long, because everyone was trying to hit in the nose, so that it would start bleeding. Such way we prepared ourselves for more serious fights.

      The Kind Policeman

      You

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