“I Love This Country*!”

by Percy Dovetonsils

Boris Timofeyevich Petrov was ecstatic. A nice-sounding young man from the Georgetown School of Law in Washington, D.C. had just called him. He had told Boris that he could find well-paying work in the United States for his two adolescent children, Sergei and Katerina. All Boris had to do was fly them over. He discussed it with his wife, Olga Fyodorevna, and they decided to send their children to the States in two weeks’ time.

“Don’t worry father,” said the naïve 16-year-old Sergei as he boarded the plane, “once we’ve made our fortune in America, we’ll send for you and mother.” Katerina, two years his younger, said “Finally, I’ll get to use my English!” Thus Boris Timofeyevich sent his two children off for what was going to be, to say the least, one of the most unusual trips of their lives.

Their “benefactor,” Jim Trapper (LAW ’00), met them at the airport. “Hi, I’m Jim, but you can call me ‘Uncle Jim,’” said Trapper. “I like it when kids call me uncle. Uh, before I can give you your, uh, jobs, I want to take you back to my apartment and show you some… stuff.”

Thinking nothing of his strange behavior, Sergei and Katerina followed him in complete trust. He took them to his Alexandria, Va. apartment. When they got into his apartment, they were surprised by the mirrored ceilings and a large collection of unlabeled videotapes in cases that seemed too large. “Does this man seem strange to you, Seryozha?” asked Katerina in Russian, beginning to suspect that Trapper was eccentric. “Do not ask such questions about our benefactor, Katerina Borisevna!” responded Sergei, upset at her seemingly groundless accusation.

But within a few days, her question seemed almost prophetic. After staying in Trapper’s apartment for three whole days, he had still not mentioned the jobs they had been promised. And one night, while they were watching the nightly news, Trapper got visibly upset at the anchorwoman and shouted “Marv Albert is just misunderstood, goddamnit!!!”

Even stranger still, one night Trapper flew into a rage about Katerina’s asking him why he kept such large amounts of Vaseline and batteries in his apartment. “What am I, on trial or something?!!” he screamed several times. He soon apologized to the confused youngsters. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Ever since I got into a car crash a year ago, I seem to have lost many of my… inhibitions.” But the apology had come too late. Their confidence in him was shaken. It would not get any better in the next few days.

Within the next few days, Trapper had twice walked in on Sergei and once on Katerina in the shower. He claimed it was an accident, but the youngsters wondered how it was that he had not heard the water running.

The following Tuesday, just when Sergei and Katerina thought things were as weird as possible, Trapper came home from work. He walked in deliberately and knocked a Gore Vidal paperback off the table next to which Sergei was standing. He then moved behind Sergei and said “Sergei, could you bend over and pick that up for me?” Sergei would never in a million years have suspected what was in store for him. Trapper gazed down at Sergei’s slim, nubile body as he bent over precariously to pick up the book for Trapper.

Sergei retrieved the book and handed it to Trapper. “Look inside,” said Trapper. Sergei opened the book. Inside it was a business card for a lawyer at a prestigious DC law firm. “It’s your new job! You’re going to start working for him tomorrow!”

Sergei began working as a law clerk and was a model employee. Within five years, he became the youngest partner ever at the firm, was earning six figures, and flew his parents over from their modest Moscow home. He owed it all to Jim Trapper who, as it turned out, was hard of hearing (and therefore could not hear the shower running), needed Vaseline to lubricate his eardrums, and batteries for his new hearing aid. He also was a faithful collector of Star Trek videos.

 

* Phrase attributed to the Soviet comedian Yakov Smirnoff