Not of the first necessity

Christmas past: the story of how my hero Yuri Kuznetsov sewed a tuxedo

Kuznetsov called: Happy New Year and all that ... Well, I am in response: "With new happiness." About the new happiness, I, like, joked. Not original, but what can be expected from the current Covid, who is battered by the second coming of me.

Kuznetsov at the other end of the wire joyfully neighing:

“You guessed. There is such. I started a tuxedo. ”

"For the hell with you, Yura, Smoking?"

Yura neighed even more uncomplicated and, I would say, defiantly.

My friend Yuri Kuznetsov, a St. Petersburg journalist, is another fruit. However, until the age of 16, shaking the term in PNI more than 30 years ago, it was considered a “vegetable” rather. Just in case, just in case, he was diagnosed with “oligophrenia in the stage of accountality” with a brief resume “uncorrone” from the orphanage to him from the orphanage in a direct course to PNI to the PNI.

In the appendage to the proposed circumstances of life, Yurke was given fate for eternal use by children's cerebral paralysis. And if ten years ago, with dexterity, honed by the chronic lack of help, he could move with the help of a cane, now he will plow Peter’s open spaces on a cunning wheelchair with a motor or on a taxi. Cerebral palsy, damn it, twist my friend more and more in an eternally aching spasm. And breathing is becoming harder for him.

Kuznetsov is my hero.

He pulled his freedom with his teeth, restoring the legal capacity, left PNI with the despair of helplessness and an incredible thirst for life. Life in him believed, and he became a journalist and public figure. Information editor of the St. Petersburg television channel, freelance adviser to the Chairman of the Committee on Social Policy of St. Petersburg, member of the Coordinating Council of Disabled Affairs under the Governor of St. Petersburg, the author and director of the documentary “Plantain” is a small part of his actions.

Yura is a hedonist. For a Russian deep disabled person, such a choice of fate is not only impossible, he was also defiantly impudent.

The Soviet, and the Russian sociotype of a disabled person, imposed on the attention of a potential benefactor, is such a pacified benevolent person without harmful desires, with chronic gratitude in the person and faith (better than the Orthodox) in the soul wounded by tests.

My friend is a workaholic - gouging, with a pathological passion for sweets, collecting a mess and a thoughtless readiness to get involved in any project where

He will soak the word “disability” with an editorial hand almost to the ground, replacing it with the word “opportunity”, albeit special.

Returning to a tuxedo.

For many years before the broadcasts a couple of times a week, Kuznetsov takes a taxi and goes to have breakfast in the “Tepl” cafe famous in St. Petersburg. There, except for divine millet porridge and pancakes, he has a lifelong (like Parker's handle) a 50 percent discount on the entire menu.

Over the years of healthy and not harmful for the retirement of breakfasts, my friend acquired a mass of pleasant dating and fleeting friendship in a cafe. The ease with which he can start a conversation with any person oncoming, gives him a secular person and a witty interlocutor. Having thus lured the next visitor to the cafe in the shadow of his charm, Kuznetsov unobtrusively poisoning his bacilli social responsibility, which for many becomes a start into small charity.

Someone leaves after breakfast in a dog shelter, someone is to volunteer in PNI, and someone just lists the money to a good deed.

The owner of the cafe Maria became, who would doubt, his friend. And a couple of months ago, after the next breakfast, the waiter told him: “Go to the manager, there is an envelope for you.” In the envelope was a farewell note from it. Maria, as it turned out, sold a cafe. And in the envelope there was a certificate for sewing a men's costume in an elite studio. Paid.

Yura is awesome. He remembered how once, sitting with her over a cup of coffee, he dropped his jacket on the floor. And she raised, critically examined ... Kuznetsov said:

“Well, yes, not a chordos. You see, it’s terribly difficult for me to choose a suit for myself. I'm the whole curve. "

- I went to the studio. You can’t even imagine what it is. I have not seen such fabrics in my life, I did not know that they were. I thought I was damaged by my mind while I chose. And how the measurements are being removed there, this is a separate number. In short, they sewed my three-gray-blue, from linen fabric. Do you even believe that I'm a handsome man? .. Are you silent? Wait a photo I will send.

A photo of Kuznetsov flew to Wottsap, who looks like a prosperous, but tired of the success of the director not our cinema. The cane on which he relied in this context was defined visually not as an orthopedic product, but as a fashion accessory.

Kuznetsov continued: “We said goodbye to these sweet guys. How much this costume costs, I never recognized, they were silent. And then the owner of Atelier Cyril called and said: “We have your measurements and all the patterns left here. Maybe you will order anything else? " I thought half a second. “Yes, I yelled into the phone. Tuxedo! You can tuxedo?! " Then we combined for two months on the phone. They wanted to give me a tuxedo. I objected: “You understand, this thing is not the first necessity, not the second or even the tenth ...” I wanted to pay it myself. Do you believe in my solvency? As a result, I broke them. But I was still inflated. They took only 30 thousand from me for Smoking. Here's how to believe people after that? "

I impatiently interrupted him with an obsessive question: "On the hell, Yur, you tuxedo?"

Kuznetsov condescendingly withstood a pause. “Smoking changes life. You can’t even imagine how much the tuxedo changes life ... I am now going to the “warmth” in a tuxedo. Everyone smiles at me. Me too.

I began to love people much more reliably. That is, not on the fact of sympathy, but on the fact of the coincidence of a feeling of happiness. Understand?"

... I looked at the window that had faded from my breath at the street torn to be torned apart by dirty snow, my nose grated from a cold spit my nose with a sentimental tear.

And Kuznetsov laughed at the phone: “Do you know what girls asked yesterday to take a picture with me?! Fairies! "