Another post by Dr. Greene, from his days abroad in Moscow. I read this again today and marvel at his writing. Each of his tales, infused with an obvious nod to his sense of humor, were always welcome.
Bob Visits the Toy Store
It seems a lot of Americans today like to complain about the ‘status’ of today’s children (or, to use a phrase I hate, ‘our future’ – they’re not my future, I can tell you that; my future has yet to be conceived and so to hell with the rest of ‘em). But I digress, Dear Readers… Suffice it to say that anyone who’s concerned or uncertain as to what will happen to America when a generation of illiterate, gun-toting, short-attention-spanned derelicts come to power should put their minds at ease. Because however bad it may be, almost certainly it can’t be half as bad as what the future holds in store for Russia.
First of all, Russia has a problem with population growth. As in, there isn’t any. Things are so critical that ultra-nationalist politician and general laughing-stock Vladimir Zhirinovskii has proposed introducing legislation that would legalize polygamy. (A penchant for polygamy appears to be the only thing the Russians have in common with the Mormon state of Utah; most Russians seem to like their Latter Day Saints held for ransom and beheaded, as happened a few years back in the south of Russia.) Zhirinovskii’s idea is that multiple marriages should be permitted as a way to encourage virile and financially-secure Russian men to bed several brides and thus, at one thrust, so to speak, solve Russia’s zero growth-rate problem. Virile? Ok, no problem there. Or at least you’ll find few Russian men who would openly admit to not being virile; which begs the question of why Viagra, then, is being sold in every pharmacy kiosk in Moscow? Financially secure? Ah, there’s the rub. Finding a financially-secure man, still less a woman, in this country is virtually impossible once you venture outside the Ring Road that encircles downtown Moscow. And good luck finding any in the provinces, either. It’s hard to be financially secure, you see, when you don’t have a job and aren’t being paid. Funny how that works. So for a whole host of reasons – not least the Orthodox Church’s understandable concern for the sanctity of marriage – polygamy won’t be getting off the ground anytime soon.
So I’ve been thinking of this zero-growth population problem lately and it seems to me it’s very simple. Why don’t Russian couples – who get married at much younger ages than their American counterparts – want to have children? The obvious reason is that they’re expensive. Children don’t grow on trees – Cabbage Patch Kids excepted – and they’re not free. Apparently you have to feed and clothe them for a number of years and all that takes time and money. Now, trust me, Russians have plenty of time – when you’re unemployed it’s amazing how many more hours there are in the day – but money, now that’s another matter altogether. But economic reasons aside, I think there’s a deeper underlying factor at work here. Put simply, Russian children are miniature hooligans.
I decided to put this little theory of mine to the test yesterday by taking a trip to Detskii Mir (Children’s World) – the largest and most famous toy store in Moscow. My friend Lynette went there for the first time several months ago to buy – of all things – a Monopoly set and said it was a ‘must-see store.’ Well, I thought, if a Russian store carried the Parker Brothers’ classic game of real estate and trading it can’t be all bad. Plus, I figured I could get some first-hand experience of watching Russian children in their element. So after a day at the library, I walked towards downtown and began my search for Detskii Mir.
Appropriately enough, Detskii Mir stands opposite the Lubyanka – the infamous headquarters of the KGB, in the basement of which thousands of Soviet citizens were tortured and killed (including our old friend G. E. Zinoviev, who got a bullet to the back of the brain in 1936; see picture in bottom left corner of the screen – pre-execution, of course). Appropriately enough, I say, because Detskii Mir is also no stranger to torture and horrors. I wandered up and down the street for a bit looking for a brightly colored building that might contain a treasure-trove of children’s toys. All I saw were hideous Stalin-era buildings with menacing facades. I finally asked an ancient woman standing on the corner (old enough to have slept with Lenin) where Detskii Mir is. She said, and I quote, "Blughhhhhahah," or words to that effect, and waved her decrepit arms in several directions at once. I took my leave of this helpful soul and decided to seek out a nearby policeman for more precise directions. So I walk up to a cop who’s lazily watching cars speed by and randomly pulling over what seemed to be every third driver to collect a nice healthy bribe. I repeat my question, in between car pull-overs, and he points straight ahead and says it’s the second building on the right, you can’t miss it.
In point of fact, you could very easily miss it, because Detskii Mir looks nothing like a toy store. I walked in the direction indicated by Moscow’s Finest and found myself standing in front of a massive four-story beige brick building that looks like a downtown post office from an economically-depressed northern US industrial town (like, oh I don’t know, Rochester, say). In fact this was one of the same buildings that I had passed just a few minutes before, saying to myself, that can’t be a toy store. I expected some sort of festive décor, perhaps banners and gaily colored streamers festooned from the rafters inviting eager, smiling children and their happy, indulgent parents to come inside and sample the amazing marvels within. Perhaps clowns or balloons or happy smiling faces ready to greet would-be customers and passers-by. None of that. Just about a dozen surly employees out on a smoke break with bad Russian cigarettes clenched in their teeth and grimacing menacingly at any and all customers as they walk through the door, who, heaven forbid, may want to purchase something – which transaction would, of course, require the disgruntled shopkeeps to abandon the sweet pleasures of nicotine-filtered goodness and go back to work. I walked past the human smokestacks, up the steps, and into the store. The store directory was hanging on the wall opposite the front door, and a quick perusal of it drew my attention to Floor Two – where the charmingly-named "Toy Division" is located. Giddy-up, I thought, that’s where I need to go. I felt like a modern-day Marlin Perkins, off to study the Russian Child in his natural environment.
Inside, Detskii Mir resembles nothing so much as a run-down department store in a downtown mall that’s seen better days. Cracked tile on the dirty floor, dingy wallpaper, buzzing fluorescent lights emitting some unseemly amount of gamma rays, the whole nine yards. Based on the exterior of the store, I had expected to see some frayed jumpropes, half a dozen splintered building blocks, and a couple of creepy one-eyed dolls. But the shelves were packed with toys. And some pretty sophisticated ones at that. Legos, 3-D jigsaw puzzles, miniature billiard tables for up and coming pool hustlers, big wheel tricycles. You couldn’t miss the tricycles, you see, because there were at least half a dozen Russian toddlers hunched over the handlebars and racing through the aisles like Hell’s Angels on their way to a biker convention. These latter-day Wild Ones were hell-bent on destruction, ramming their tricycles into display cases, slamming into pedestrians, and brandishing fists and threats to other trikers who appeared to be wearing the ‘colors’ of a rival gang of riders. They must have recognized that I was a neutral party in their gang-banging thug war, and let me pass through the melee unscathed. I collected my thoughts and moved on to the computer section (singular, because there is only one computer and I don’t think it’s for sale). Here I saw a half-dozen children of various ages and sizes crammed around a blurry screen fighting over a joystick. The computer game they were playing was some sort of racing simulator which resembled the tricycle mayhem going on just a few aisles down. Fisticuffs and curses were exchanged amongst the children as they battled for control of who would get to play the game and crash the car – none of the kids seemed very interested in actually winning the computer race, they just wanted to total as many vehicles as possible.
I got the eerie feeling that I was somehow out of place in the store. Where were the parents on hand to resolve the conflicts? Where were the mothers or fathers to pull their children out of the tricycle demolition derby and reprimand them for their hooliganism? Where were the store employees making an effort to regain order and control on the showroom floor? I looked around and wandered through some of the more deserted aisles. My uneasiness grew as I came to the realization that I was the only adult in the store, indeed the only one on the premises over the age of 12. I had flashbacks to Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome – perhaps these children were abandoned and had formed some sort of primitive tribal society in the absence of parental authority. The parents, I surmised, seeking peace and quiet on a Saturday afternoon, had all abandoned their children at Detskii Mir for the day, dumping them unceremoniously amidst a storefull of toys priced astronomically beyond affordability. The employees, as already noted, were busily smoking and, then again, they’re paid (if they are paid) to sell toys, not watch kids; and since no one’s buying toys, really no need for them to be inside the store. The result is an unsupervised and terrifying state of nature. Detskii Mir is a children’s paradise gone horrible awry, a jungle where chaos reigns and anarchy is the order of the day. There are no rules, there are no restrictions. It is a Hobbesian hell where might makes right, an indoor and air-conditioned version of Lord of the Flies. Half expecting to see a pig’s head impaled on a stake, I quickly exited the store before the conch sounded to summon the wild children to council. As I left, the store clerks were still marshalled outside on the steps, exiled as it were from their own place of employment by the chaos going on within. Half of me hoped that someone would go inside before the store closed at 9.00 and make sure all the kids were out before locking up for the night. But only half of me. Perhaps, Dear Friends, zero-population growth isn’t such a bad thing after all.