It is impossible not to fall in love with Yulenka. She’s twenty-eight, ah! Yulenka is the sun, Yulenka is charming, she has cute dimples on her cheeks and she just sparkles with love of life. Also, what a smile she has! Fall in love with her faster, but keep in mind: Yulenka is married. Daughter Varenka, with the same dimples on her cheeks, and Yulenka’s husband’s name is Vasily, and he is good.
He is good, although … Although Yulenka sometimes does not like that her husband commands her. He commands, because he always says what she needs to do, but he himself does not do what Yulenka tells him. Why is he behaving like this?
When she climbed into her father’s lap as a child, father always put aside his affairs and did not say that he was busy. And the husband says. And he walks around with a dissatisfied face. Why does he put himself above her and point something out to her? Why can he do everything, and she needs to obey him? It’s just disgusting and embarrassing. Here dad always allowed her to do what she wants!
In fact, Yulenka is not at all harmful and loves her husband, but she does not succeed in obeying her husband. She wants to but can’t! She tries to agree with him, but next to her husband something happens to her that she immediately argues with him. Because of this, the husband constantly sighs, as if Yulenka is to blame for this, but this is not so!
Yulenka is not to blame at all, because she cannot help herself. She even argues with herself all the time: when she says something to herself, she argues with herself. Men won’t understand her. Men are somehow more primitive: you tell him, he will go and do it, but a woman cannot do that. A woman has a more complex nature!
So, it is especially unpleasant when the husband makes a displeased face and points out to her her mistakes. And what if she promised to clean the room in the morning, and then changed her mind. Did she take it away? And why does he demand that everything happen at once? He can do this right away: once — he did it, but Yulenka has a different character, she needs to first tune in.
Mom always said this to dad and explained: “Our Yulenka will always do everything, you just don’t need to put pressure on her and demand right now. She needs to say affectionately, then she will finish the game and do everything!
And what Yulenka can’t stand is all sorts of fines and sanctions. It’s kind of cruel. Yulenka herself does not do this and does not allow it with herself. When dad tried to punish her a long time ago, she stubbornly and coped with him at once. “I’ll take away all the toys” — Yulenka let it pass her ears and continued to do it her own way. On «I’ll put it in a corner!» she went to a corner and wept there, but she did not change her habits. And you can’t spank her: she’s a girl! Yulenka loves when everything is kind, human, so if she was promised some gifts, then she immediately perked up and quickly taught her parents: with Yulenka you can only be nice, it’s useless to put pressure on her. Moreover, her mother supported her: “You don’t need to make an army out of your family! Girls are different, you can’t command them like boys! Since then, everyone treated Yulenka only gently and carefully, and since Yulenka did not like to strain, she got used to doing everything only for pleasure, as she wanted.
Mom always argued with dad when he called Yulenka naughty. Mom explained to him that you can’t talk like that, that you need to understand the difference between boys and girls. These are ruffy boys who resist, and girls are obedient, affectionate and kind by nature. It’s just that they are somewhat similar to cats: they like to do everything in their own way and when they want to. It’s even written in books! And it’s good that Yulenka does everything a little differently. All girls like to bring their individuality into the business, and not stupidly repeat after an adult. It’s okay if a girl has her own opinion.
Yulenka liked what her mother said, and she was used to doing everything when she wanted and the way she wanted. Is there anything they want from her? She will do everything, but later and in her own way. It’s her nature!
Yulenka’s nature is to be late, and she can’t do anything about it. She is always late, she is late everywhere, the only thing that helps is to set the clock hands 15 minutes ahead and leave for the airport with an hour to spare.
Where does Yulenka come from? And it’s all because of the toys.
Yulenka loved to play with toys as a child. Yulenka had a lot of them, she liked to pull out a large box of toys from under the bed, sit down with it in the middle of the room, dump all the toys around her out of it and play with pleasure. What? Nothing.
So she comes across the Sasha doll, she plays with Sasha and takes her to the store, in the store she meets the Dasha doll and plays sisters Sasha and Dasha, who probably want to travel, because she had an airplane at hand. Now she leaves Sasha and Dasha and steers the plane, which is preparing to take off. What toy she has at hand — she plays with that toy. The toys themselves told her what to do with them, the toys asked Yulenka to play with them — do you know how difficult it is to refuse?
The pie says to her: “Eat me”, and she has to eat the pie, the coloring book asks her: “Color the skirt, well, a little!”, and Yulenka begins to paint the skirt with a yellow felt-tip pen. Why yellow? Because he was at hand and asked her: «Take me!». And now it is not Yulenka who controls the toys, but the toys control her.
Maybe the parents didn’t teach Yulenka in vain that there should be a goal in the game, that there should be rules, that games should not only entertain, but also teach … Although — how can Yulenka be taught this, because games are her territory, and Yulenka plays the way she wants. How can parents interfere in this?
Meanwhile, other things began to subordinate her to their will, and Yulenka was captured. And now Yulenka is always late.
Before leaving, she can’t help but check the stove and put the rag back in place, but taking the rag in her hands, she wants to wipe the table, and when she wipes, the extra dishes need to be removed from the table, the dishes need to be put in her dishwasher (and where else? ), then wash your hands (but how?), you need to wipe your hands with a special towel, for which you need to get the towel and not hang it back, but replace it, because it’s time to change it … And she went to quickly change the towel, although it’s time for her go out and her husband is waiting for her. And when her husband gets angry and starts making noise at her, Yulenka starts to fuss, makes meaningless eyes and finally stops thinking.
It’s hard to talk to your husband. And it’s not that he doesn’t understand Yulenka, but because he constantly criticizes and finds fault. Here she just starts to say something, and her husband interrupts her: tell me right away, without preambles, briefly — what do you want? What do you want to say? This only makes Yulenka nervous: how many times she explained to him that she can’t immediately and briefly, because women have a different type of thinking. Yulenka tried to tell her husband that for a woman everything is connected with everything and everything is important, so it is difficult for her to single out something important without paying attention to everything else, but can you prove something to a stubborn man? The main thing is that while Vasily (that’s her husband’s name) was courting her, he didn’t pester her with his logic, he only looked at her with loving eyes and got angry only when she said: “I have to go.”
And now…
And now Vasily gets angry when she speaks irrelevantly and demands that in a serious conversation she does not dump everything at once, but speaks in order and without repetitions, otherwise he gets confused and cannot understand anything. Yulenka is trying, but Vasily will always find fault: here she said too much, here she is categorical, she made a mistake in this place and, in principle, went already in the third circle. It’s a shame!
However, in fact, Vasily in Yulenka evokes a feeling of admiration and awe: the fact is that Vasily knows how to think. He knows how to not just sort out options, but really think. This is very similar to witchcraft: Vasily sometimes falls silent, his eyes stop, but his eyes seem to begin to see what others do not see. And — time! Suddenly Vasily says a solution that hits the mark.
At school, they wanted to teach her this witchcraft, but there it was not necessary and not interesting. Most importantly, Yulenka had an excellent memory, and it was superfluous for her to learn theorems. She knew perfectly well when the teacher would call her, and then it was easy: one more look at the textbook, opened to the right page, then say at the blackboard what the teacher expected from her, and finally get all this rubbish out of her head when she returns from the blackboard to to your desk.
And stupid guys didn’t know how to do this, and all the years of study at school they seriously tried to understand and figure something out. Yulenka was an excellent student, and the boys were three-year-olds, but now Vasily turns up his nose, and Yulenka asks her husband: “But think, how is that?”
What will happen next? Then everything will be as usual. By the age of thirty, Yulenka will begin to vaguely guess that her difficulties are not female characteristics, but developmental problems, or, in other words, Yulenka “does not pull” next to men. In five years, Yulenka herself will understand that she is more stupid than men. She really does not know how to think, she has “everything is connected with everything”, she can only speak from word to word, but not from meaning to meaning. At first, it will seem to her that she is the only one … But after another five years it will dawn on her that this applies not only to her, but to almost all the women around her, and then she will take a confident position in the general female defense, arguing that life begins from love, and not from order, the heart is certainly more important than the mind, emotions are more convincing than reason, and feelings do not lie and are deeper than straightforward male logic.
Young lady, of course, you are right about everything. Just please don’t argue with your husband how to raise your daughter Varenka. Varenka is smart, Varenka is a joy, at least bring her up properly!
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Comment from N.I. Kozlov:
I will never agree with the statement that all women are Yulenka and absolutely all men are Vasily. It’s just not true. At least there are many families around me with women whom I cannot but respect: they are smart, strong women, excellent leaders. They are organized, keep track of time, are able to simultaneously run a business and raise several children. On the other hand, I know a lot of men who are very similar to Yulenka — there is no discipline, they are late, procrastinate and easily fall into emotions.
I am sure you are also familiar with such men and such women.
This story is about something else. This story is not about a specific girl and not even about modern men and women. This is primarily a story about modern education, about the culture of modern education, a very controversial culture. It talks about the traditional mistakes of modern parents — and especially the mistakes in raising girls.
Modern upbringing is growing infantiles more and more, and the story of Yulenka is the story of most modern children. And yet, as for the author, it is the upbringing of girls that causes the greatest anxiety for me: it seems that this is where most parents make the most serious mistakes. I am sure that our task is to ring the bell, show the consequences of these mistakes and suggest what a reasonable upbringing should look like. I really want this to become our common task.