Yesterday my daughter sent me this picture and asked me if I liked it. At first I was surprised. What should I like about it when the picture shows an elderly gentleman with a T-shirt that says Born in U.S.A. Okay, I know there’s a song under that name, but still? Then I looked more closely and realized what was actually written on the T-shirt. You have probably noticed by now, writes Born in Yugoslavia.
Memories began to spring up. I was born in the same country as this gentleman. I spent my childhood and youth in it, I went to school there and started working. I don't know if I'm just nostalgic or not, but I remember how are we traveled to "our sea" every year as a child, how we all wore uniforms at school and didn't notice the social differences between us, how many generations used the same textbooks for school so that we could inherit them from each other, how we hung out and traveled freely wherever we wanted, how the faculties were enrolled by those with the most knowledge, but at that faculty they did not have to pay for the enrollment of the year or each exam ... I also remember those not so beautiful things: shortages of oil, coffee, gasoline (does anyone remember driving on even and odd days and even and odd weekends) When I add and subtract everything, beautiful memories prevail, or it bothers me just do it?
My daughters were not born in that country. It meant nothing to them when I tried to help them learn who belonged to the South Slavs, so I told them to just think of the countries that made up Yugoslavia and add Bulgaria. I don't know, maybe it's better now. What I know for sure is that I went on vacation every year, even though my parents had two high school salaries, and that we only managed to take our children on vacation twice, that textbooks are changed in schools every year (in different primary schools. are used even in the same year, different), the faculty can enroll anyone but also that it costs a lot ...
Maybe it was all like this, and maybe the memory is deceiving me. As Kusturica said at the end of the film Underworld
"Once upon a time there was one country"
Citam sta coveku pise na majci, rodjen u usa, iskreno, ja se time ne bi' hvalio, a sto se uniformi tice, potpuno se slazem za to. Mislim da mi je brat pricao kad su mu deca u Australiji isla u skolu da su nosila uniformu i to je jedan od najboljih nacina da se odmah ne vidi razlika u finansijskim mogucnostima njihovih roditelja...