When I was a kid, teachers used to tell me: “Navalny, if you don’t study hard, you’ll be held back a year and then end up in vocational school.” I studied well, but I ended up in vocational school anyway. Yep. I’m a vocational school student, training in occupation 19601: “seamstress.” What, did you think I’d just go straight to sewing in the prison industrial zone? As if there were nothing to learn there? Not at all. Take the iron, for example. It doesn’t just “iron” things — it performs heat-press treatment on a garment piece. And for your information, there are: - seam pressing open - edge pressing - easing with an iron - crease pressing That’s only what I know already. But the whole situation is so ironic that I have no doubt there will also be: - hyper-ironing - post-ironing and, of course, - meta-ironing On top of that, I now know that a “bobbin” is not just a word whose sole purpose is to rhyme with another word — it’s an actual object. We’ve got a real vocational school here. With notebooks, classrooms, practical assignments, and tests. Two excellent teachers — very patient women. I’d lose my mind with students like us. The students, naturally, all have shaved heads, which makes it feel like my schoolteacher’s prophecy came true twice over. Not only am I in vocational school, I’m in a class that looks like it’s for people who got held back ten years in a row. Apparently, as the most questionable vocational student of the lot, I’m assigned a special staff member. He sits at the desk next to mine, puts a video recorder on the table pointed at me, and stays like that through all five hours of class. In a hat and a military jacket. Next to a sewing machine. Sometimes he says things to me like: “Alexei Anatolyevich, stop looking out the window, there’s nothing interesting there.” At moments like that, the feeling of having traveled back in time is absolutely complete. I’m doing fine with the theory. I even got a top grade on a test. But the sewing itself isn’t going well. The sewing speed is controlled by a pedal, and my machine either stands still or suddenly tears ahead at full speed, stitching a completely crooked line, which sends me into a rage — and then, obviously, nothing works at all. As the teacher wisely said: “Well, you shouldn’t have gone and grown yourself a size-46 foot (EU size, about US men’s 13)!” That’s true. I really shouldn’t have. Well, I’ll probably learn. After all, it’s never too late to learn 😉