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Most Punchable Face
‘The fatties will get skinny, the skinnies will die!’
We lived in Podolsk, a small town south of Moscow. Around the age I am now, as I write this, my dad took me to meet his friend and judo instructor, Maga. My image of Maga is blurry — my dad made a point of keeping his private life separate from his family life — but I remember him as a husky man in a white judo robe, his bearded face massive, eyes bulging slightly, a drop of sweat always on his forehead, never ceasing to smile. However, that smile must have been an illusion, a magic trick, because Maga — like most people in Podolsk then — was known for shady activities, mostly involving beating people up.
The day we were formally introduced, he was in the middle of teaching a class of bald teenagers. He grabbed one of the boys, took him by the arm, and flipped him over his shoulder onto the mat. After a loud THUMP, he turned to the rest of his students, spread his hands, and said, “That’s how it’s done. Now break into pairs and repeat.”
Then, walking over to where my young dad and I stood, he said, “So where were we? Ah, little Serezha — yeah, let’s train him.”
My “training,” of course, involved little more than running in circles around the gym alongside boys three heads taller than me — and maybe the occasional push up.
