Yesterday Megan and I were chatting with Jenya in our usual Russlish. We'd somehow gotten on the topic of AK-47's, because Jenya didn't believe our translation of his Russian word to "machine gun" despite our repeated acting out of shooting a machine gun. So we looked them up on the wonderful world wide web.
Jenya then told us that he'd learned to shoot an AK-47 in high school, where he'd had a class on it. You had to be able to load it fast enough and then shoot it at a man-shaped target. Also in this class he learned how to properly throw grenades. If you didn't throw the grenade far enough, you failed the class. That's probably because if they had been live grenades (they weren't) and you didn't throw them far enough, you would have failed life.
He was really surprised that we didn't have classes like this in America. When he asked why, I just told him that Americans hate guns because they're afraid of them. This confused Jenya, because it's so easy to get a gun in America. You just go in a store and buy it. Here it's a lot harder. But should a Russian with a high school education ever happen to need a gun, he may or may not be prepared to use it... I still haven't quite figured out if Jenya was serious or not.
Jenya then told us that he'd learned to shoot an AK-47 in high school, where he'd had a class on it. You had to be able to load it fast enough and then shoot it at a man-shaped target. Also in this class he learned how to properly throw grenades. If you didn't throw the grenade far enough, you failed the class. That's probably because if they had been live grenades (they weren't) and you didn't throw them far enough, you would have failed life.
He was really surprised that we didn't have classes like this in America. When he asked why, I just told him that Americans hate guns because they're afraid of them. This confused Jenya, because it's so easy to get a gun in America. You just go in a store and buy it. Here it's a lot harder. But should a Russian with a high school education ever happen to need a gun, he may or may not be prepared to use it... I still haven't quite figured out if Jenya was serious or not.
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