Victories in Russian

I have achieved some amazing skills right before going home where I no longer need them. An American named Dave is here helping us finish the apartment repairs, and he wanted to buy fabric softener and a special instrument to remove the wallpaper. He explained the instrument as "a roller with spikes to punch holes in the wallpaper." Complicated enough in English, and I didn't know the word for either roller or spikes.

I told Vera, "Dave wants a liquid that you put in laundry to make it soft" and she understood that, phew. They sent me and Max, who has had one semester of Russia, to the little "home products" store to buy fabric softener, see if they had a spiked roller, and if not, ask where we could find one. Which means we'd have to ask for directions, understand them, and follow them.

The conversation between me and Max was something like this:

"Well, those bottles with kittens and babies on them are definitely fabric softener. Which one do we want?"

"Probably the strongest, since we're trying to destroy wallpaper."

"I'd guess the one without pictures of kittens and babies is the strongest."

"But if it doesn't have kittens and babies, it might not be fabric softener. I think it's floor cleaner."

"OK then, kittens or babies?"

"Kittens are cheaper, let's go kittens."

I ask the woman for a bottle of that stuff on the far left. Success one.

Then we look around. There are only sponge paint rollers and one roller in a box.

"Maybe that has spikes on it. Let's ask if we can see inside the box," suggests Max.

"I'm almost positive that is a roller for shoe polish, because everything else in the case with it is shoe polish." We laugh at how Dave would like rolling shoe polish all over the wall.

"OK, here's my strategy. I'm going to read on those paint rollers what the word for 'roller' is. Then when we go to the other store, I'll be able to ask for 'a roller with sharp things on it.'" I figured it would be whatever word that all the paint rollers had in common. But I couldn't see them close enough (these little stores keep everything behind the counter so that foreigners have to learn how to say the word for everything before they can have it).

I asked the woman in Russian if she knew where they sold instruments for removing wallpaper. She said if we turned right, there was a shop just around the corner called something very difficult like "mstrOKE." I kept repeating this sound as we went around the corner, hoping I'd recognize it. I couldn't picture how it would be written. I had this nagging feeling that it was the Russian pronounciation of something in English."Do you remember what the store was called?" "something 'oak' - sorry I wasn't listening."

The sign around the corner said "Master OK." Then we laughed. "Oh, it's 'master' and 'OK'!" "Stupid Russian lady," said Max kindly.

Inside I saw clearly printed that a roller was a "rolik." I asked for a rolik with teeth to take off wallpaper. The man said he had roliks with teeth for doing something else I did not understand, and we said that would be fine. We took a beautiful spiked metal roller and a bottle with kittens on it home, where Dave said they worked better than anything he had in America.

I am so amazing.