Russian memories

40 years back, the Russians launched this stamp, not long after I had appeared on the planet. Can you feel the Socialist glory with all those shades and hues of red?

This stamp came to me a couple weeks back, the lone Russian stamp in a pile of stamps from (mostly) Southeast Asian countries. How it got into the pile, I will never know. But it took me back to my junior high school days.

I was the penultimate geek, the introverted smart kid with no social skills whatsoever. Over the years, I naturally bonded with others who did not fit in. One of my good friends was YS, whose family had just arrived from Russia. This would have been the late 70s, I think, not a time known for the open-mindedness of middle school students in Texas.

He was a smart kid and well-motivated but had no friends besides me. We rode the bus together and one day a bunch of local rednecks-in-the-making were trying to start trouble with him as we got off the bus. This was a couple years before I would dive into Gandhi, MLK Jr., and Thoreau, but I knew something was wrong and that I needed to do something.

I stood next to my friend and interposed my body between him and those who would taunt or strike him. I have no idea why they didn't try to attack me at that point. Neither of us said anything back to them. He just kept walking and I kept shielding him with my body. Finally they got bored and left us alone.

We never talked about that incident. There were much more important things to talk about, such as classes in school and the stamps he had smuggled out of Russia. Hard to believe today, but apparently it was a big deal at that time. Still, it can be tough to separate a boy from his stamps.

He gave me a couple and they briefly rekindled my interest in stamp collecting, which had fizzled by the time I moved from Nebraska to Texas. These were classic Russian space program stamps, unusual in size and a rarity for me.

They lie buried somewhere in a mountain of books and papers and other debris in my father's basement in Nebraska. Seeing this stamp, I need to get back to Nebraska and dig those others out.