If now a time machine transported me back to when I was twelve years old, I would go in for sports, get braces, it was still free. I would take vitamins, run in the morning, grow my hair, which I also comb. I would force my parents to sell their damp, cold apartment and move to a comfortable one. I would move to another school and take up dancing.

I would take first place in competitions and my PR would become more serious than the PR of a pastor, and even more so his daughter.

Remember, it is much more important to attract attention to yourself with your own merits, and not with someone else’s.

There was one incident that I will never forget as an eternal shame and stigma of stupidity on my self-confidence.

David, that was the name of my hero, went to the same only decent disco in the city that I did. Even then, he was already meeting Olya secretly from the parishioners, but he still could not refuse a fun time with friends at the club. I knew this and believed that either now or later it would be too late. I asked him to walk me home, saying that we are from the same church, as a friend you are obliged.

He reluctantly left his friends and we wandered two blocks through the winter night. He walked and I flew.

I was just fluttering around, I was incredibly happy, which now seems simply ridiculous. Imagine, I believed and hoped that now he would understand everything.

He will see that I am beautiful, smart, cheerful, kind, cool, after all, at the age of fourteen I already went to an adult nightclub, smoked, drank, danced, guys liked me, they invited me to slow dance, and in general I became quite famous as… who?

I can’t even find the words right now. My reputation was twofold. Among my mutual acquaintances with my neighbor, thanks to her gossip, I was considered a strange but brave ugly girl. Among those who saw me for the first time, I was a cute, slightly frivolous wit.

Do you see how much anti-PR can ruin your life? Even then, I needed to deal with my critical villain, but I lacked gunpowder and intelligence.

True, if, as I wrote earlier, from the age of twelve I had taken myself more seriously, cast aside my laziness and begun to invest all my resources in my potential, then by the age of fourteen I would have been a completely different Margarita. By the way, this way I could get rid of my envious, evil neighbor.

So that night, in the light of lanterns and shining snow, I did an irreparable act, which I later had to fight through for years in order to even begin to even look at David directly and communicate.

Oh horror, when I reached my house, I took a step closer. And even then I could understand that it was not worth going further. He didn't respond with a reaction.

Due to his height, I was forced to make a not very easy maneuver. I had to not only pull him towards me by the jacket, but also stand on tiptoe.

All this had to be done in a second, so that the boy, many times stronger than me, would not run away.

I decided to kiss him.

Well, how did you decide? Eighty percent. Twenty percent of my modesty, unfortunately, worsened the reaction, and I froze mid-step.

What it looked like.

Step forward, tiptoes, head and neck stretched forward and upward, lips stretched into a pipe.

“Dudok” – yes, yes. The same one, only without fillers; back then they didn’t know about them in the Russian outback.

And I froze with my eyes closed.

This moment did not last long. David gently pushed me away from him by the shoulders and said, “It would be wrong, I can’t.” And after politely saying goodbye, he left.