Friday, February 10, 2006
The One in Which Our Correspondent Walks into A Monty Python Sketch
I went to the central post office this afternoon to pick up a package my mother had sent and, upon showing the woman at the pick-up window my passport, we had the following exchange (in Russian):
Her [pointing to my passport picture, in which my head is shaved and I look oddly like a bullfrog, fat and squat, partly due to camera angle, partly do to my being fat and squat at the time of the photo]: This is you?
Me: Yes, that is me.
Her: Really?
Me: Yes, really. It is a picture of me. It is my passport.
Her: This is not a joke? I don't believe you. It looks nothing like you.
Me: I understand. I look different now. It is not a joke. No joke. Really. It is me.
Her: Well...okay.
We had that conversation, in various forms, three separate times in the twenty minutes I was there. It was all surreal and wonderfully hilarious to me. She kept holding up my passport in front of her and looking from it to me and back and forth, all the while making a face like she was being duped. I finally showed her my AUCA ID, which has a picture on it taken right after we got here, and she finally believed me. It was like a before, during, after thing. I have hair now (real, honest to Buddha, bangs-over-my-eyebrows, run-your-fingers-through-it hair!) and, well, I've lost a lot of weight since we've been here. Which is a good thing, obviously, as looking like a bullfrog is not exactly a life goal, you know?
Her [pointing to my passport picture, in which my head is shaved and I look oddly like a bullfrog, fat and squat, partly due to camera angle, partly do to my being fat and squat at the time of the photo]: This is you?
Me: Yes, that is me.
Her: Really?
Me: Yes, really. It is a picture of me. It is my passport.
Her: This is not a joke? I don't believe you. It looks nothing like you.
Me: I understand. I look different now. It is not a joke. No joke. Really. It is me.
Her: Well...okay.
We had that conversation, in various forms, three separate times in the twenty minutes I was there. It was all surreal and wonderfully hilarious to me. She kept holding up my passport in front of her and looking from it to me and back and forth, all the while making a face like she was being duped. I finally showed her my AUCA ID, which has a picture on it taken right after we got here, and she finally believed me. It was like a before, during, after thing. I have hair now (real, honest to Buddha, bangs-over-my-eyebrows, run-your-fingers-through-it hair!) and, well, I've lost a lot of weight since we've been here. Which is a good thing, obviously, as looking like a bullfrog is not exactly a life goal, you know?
