àêöèÿ | ñóêà-ëþáîâü | remedy for a quarrel

îïóáëèêîâàíî â ãàçåòå "Àêöèÿ" 31 àâãóñòà 2007

Once upon a time, I met a girl. "She’s the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry" — yes and no. Meaning, not only.

What was more important for me, she was both young and smart. Before I met her, I did not believe in this kind of combination. I was much more of a chauvinistic than I am now. She was very young and very smart, too. There was no subject we were not able to talk about. I was surprised. Besides that, she had an unbelievable body. Et cetera, et cetera…

It was in the early summer when she agreed to meet me for a walk. We met near a metro station and went down the river. We talked and talked. I looked into her eyes and saw them laughing at me. Many times since that moment, I felt she was laughing at me. I don’t mean I was funny, I mean she was kind of a game.

The weather was fine and we met each other almost every evening. I finished my job early and flew away to see her after the institute studies. We went to the movies, saw some theatre plays, visited a few exhibitions. Honestly speaking, it did not matter for me what to do — I just wanted to see her every night. And she didn’t mind. It was such a pleasure to walk beside her along the street, I still think we made a great couple: a tall shapely young man and a girl of medium height, bright long hair and blue eyes — you could see the color of her eyes in ten steps or even more!
Some dates later I felt in love with her and after our first kiss I totally lost my mind.

Time passed, I was not too experienced to understand some obvious things (obvious for me now) so we quarreled a few times. Well, we did not cried at each other and did not call each other all sorts of names, no. But we did put some claims as “who was that guy” and “why did you said it in that kind of voice”, etc. I’m sure you know how it happens; you have said it many times in your own life.

The problem is it seems like you cannot do anything about it. You can’t help fighting for no reason at all. And even when there is one — it’s not worthy to spoil your relationship and harm your feelings. But you feel helpless. You are trying to explain yourself to the person you love and just make nothing but another conflict. It’s a kind of a vicious circle: one quarrel makes a dozen of others, every one of them produces some tiffs…

So we quarreled. But once we decided (the idea was mine and I’m still proud of it) to argue in English. Why? — very simple. Fortunately many of us (people of the same age, same generation I mean) do speak English — someone better, someone worse, but most of us do. The idea is that while you are speaking a foreign language, you think more about how to say. More than about what to say — because usually there is no problem to find a topic for the discussion…

Besides while speaking some foreign language you listen to yourself more attentively. And thanks to that if you’re quarrelling you cannot notice how funny it is, how comical it sounds.

So we finally laughed. And almost every quarrel finished in short time. That’s how we invented our remedy for a quarrel.

P. S. Yes, I did look into the dictionary for several words’ translation. So don’t hesitate to use it also while reading this article. If needed, of course.