A YOUNG IVERS AND AN OLD IVERS

by Ivan Petryshyn

Once upon a time, there lived a small Ivers in a small recreation and curing zone. He liked to run, as a baby, very quickly. He liked to walk in the greenery as a small boy. He liked to be with his neighbors friends to learn more of what they have known.
His neighbor began to go to school, and Ivers was left behind, as he was one year younger. But, then, he was allowed to go to school. And he went with his neighbor, and sat at a desk, but the teacher was strict, and he tried to caress the green desk, and a small piece of wood entered his finger, and he started to cry, and all decided that it was too early for him to go to school, and he stayed back. He had to go to school the next year.
He went to school, and there he met many interesting girls, among them Waxane, who knew to play the piano, and Helene, who liked to dance, and Helen and Ivers started to dance Lemberg’s folk dances, and had been dancing them for eight years, till the time that Iver’s voice began man-like, and he was made sing in a choir that nobody really like.
And… Ivers started to play an accordion, as all other boys did the same, and he studied solfegio and the scales, and played simple pieces. And the time came, and he started the piano, and he liked it, and, then, he stopped, as he liked to write more. And Helene had moved to a bigger town to learn the ballet, and Ivers was also invited, but he didn’t go there, as it was far, and the winters were wintry cold and long, and scary, and he had to live in a boarding house, which he hated. He liked English and reading Homer’s books…
And, then, he began to be a student of English and, partially, German, and he studied Latin, which he liked so much that he wrote 3 poems in that language, as a revenge for the Latin teacher who gave him only a B grade.
And he wrote and translated poems, and, then, he began working as a teacher of English in a Gever’s region zone, and, after, he went back to his Alma Mater, and he became a senior teacher, and, then he was invited to the capital, where all languages were studying, and he taught Italian, and he was liked, but, some time later, he left for the Big Land of Hammers, and was a salesman, a sandwich-master, an operator with Polish, Russian and Ukrainian. And, then, he was a professor at a University of all the Shigacoes, and, after- a medical, court and delegations’ interpreter , and, then- again a professor, and a writer, and, in the long run- a tamer of jungle youngsters who wanted to learn and to dream correctly.
And, he wanted to go back to the capital, but, on the phone, the Big Magician of the Professors said they had better teachers, than him, and Ivers was upset and insulted, as it appeared, they invited only, when they needed a servant to serve, and he forgot the Lembergian language, and started to speak German and Old English writing poems and translating them.
And, there, he is the conoscieur of the five- plus languages to teach the beautiful, the useful and the necessary.
And Ivers got old.