Communism Sucks – Period.
I’ll admit it. There’s something a little “romantic” about the idea of living on a commune – especially one of those “off the grid” jobbies that’s so completely self-sufficient it would make the Swiss Family Robinson blush. Just a small handful of people taking care of the land, the animals, teaching each other’s children not only school subjects, but practical skills too, like farming, equipment maintenance, and growing herbs for medicinal use.
What do you expect? My childhood was split between the San Fransisco Bay Area and the most rural area code in New York State with healthy doses of Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons in heavy syndication. Not to mention, in my adult life, I’ve made a few friends who actually LIVED on communes as children. Their stories make it sound like a “Disnified” version of the years I spent living in trailer parks, with friendlier neighbors, more granola and less littering.
Still, living in the shadow of Cold War, I was raised to summarily reject Communism as a form of government. Growing up in that era meant that I met people who remembered the violent revolutions, the death, the destruction and the mass poverty that ensued. So that’s what was taught in schools and what we heard about first hand from those who were fortunate enough to make it out of their nations and rebuild their lives here in the good ol’ USA.
People I’ve encountered in my life who unironically support communism obviously missed those classes in history. They also fail to understand that a) if they’d like to live on a commune, in the US they’re literally FREE to do so and b) top-down, Government-run communism always leads to corruption, wide-spread poverty and dehumanization.
I learned about the dehumanization firsthand as a 14-year-old girl on a once-in-a-lifetime trip behind the fabled “iron curtain.”
I’ve had some very Forrest Gumpy moments in my life – the Gumpiest was by far the European trip my mom took me and my brother on with her college classmates over her winter break from 1989-1990. We literally spent New Year’s Eve in West Berlin while the Wall was coming down and fireworks exploded all around us - even INSIDE of the McDonald’s where we stopped for a quick lunch. (My brother was only eight at the time and loved French fries – don’t judge!)
But even as the wall crumbled (with the help of Berliners and visitors like us chipping away at it) New Year’s Day took us deeper behind the Iron Curtain into Prague, Czechoslovakia. (It used to be a country – look it up!) It was this deeply historic, beautiful, dingy, despairing place where I just happened to get my second ever period.
“Oh no! Yuck! Gross! Rev – I wanted to read while you railed on communism – not hear about nasty lady hygiene things! WHYYYYYY?!?” Read on – you shall see.
This was a problem. As someone without any kind of regular patterns to this new “biorhythm,” it never occurred to me to pack supplies. The bulk our travels were to countries where German was at least one of the official languages spoken, since the trip was sponsored by my mother’s college German Club. Hence – most of us on the trip, self-included spoke at least some German. However, Czechs were not super fans of Germans or anything remotely Germanish in nature. Even the few who might have spoken and understood it were unlikely to admit it and help. If you ever want to learn how to REALLY work a grudge – take lessons from an Eastern European… (not that they don’t have stellar reasons. Again – history – look it up…)
Enter my mother’s German Professor, a middle-aged man – NOT the kind of person a 14-year-old girl wants to engage in product discussions with. He was having a blast in Prague, walking up to complete strangers and trying to learn random phrases and wrap his brain around Czech grammar. So imagine my horror to his delight when my mother told him we needed help procuring specialized items from a pharmacy.
I know what you’re thinking. “Why didn’t you just go to a CVS and pull a box of Tampax off the shelf???”
This was 1980s Prague. And NONE of our group spoke Czech. This place wasn’t European – it was foreign. Weary, cranky Czechs dressed in drab colors, peered at us warily as we passed them on the busy, yet eerily quiet streets. Many of the bright, easily recognizable symbols of western commerce one might expect to steer them into certain businesses for specialized shopping experiences were completely absent.
To someone who didn’t speak or read Czech, it was virtually impossible to tell the outside of bookstore from a beauty parlor. When we finally WERE directed inside of a pharmacy, it was nothing like the friendly aisles of stocked shelves at Fay’s where my family spent wayyy too much time and money in between my cases of strep throat and my mother’s migraine headaches. It was more like how I imagined Wall Street combined with The Pit Of Despair from The Princess Bride. A bunch of mostly women were crowded into a room pushing toward the other end where there was a counter that ran the full length of the store. All the items were behind the counter. To get what you wanted, you had to push up through the throng of shoppers, wave wildly to one of the people standing behind the counter, and yell at the top of your lungs what you were there to buy. In hindsight – I guess it was more like the only Irish Bar in town on March 17th…
I digress. Perhaps if I was older and less self-conscious about my “blossoming into womanhood…”. Perhaps if I understood a single lick of Czech and could have appreciated the sound of people hollering for hemorrhoid cream or foot fungus spray… Perhaps if the German teacher at LEAST had been a woman… Of course – he wasn’t. The whole room stared in the direction of me, my mother and her German professor, who in halting Czech, yelled out that he needed feminine hygiene. Only, by the time he started talking, he didn’t need to yell. Everyone was listening.
There was some chatter among the women behind the counter. A relatively plain looking box was passed back through the crowd to where we stood. Upon opening it and peering inside, it looked kind of like the lambswool I bought when I needed to break in a new pair of pointe shoes. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. As the professor, my mother and I puzzled over the box, a kind woman nearby explained in slow unintelligible words and what otherwise would be considered rather obscene hand gestures how women used the wad of cotton inside. I blanched – more mortified than I’d ever imagine possible. In her wisdom, she discerned who the product was for and passed it back to the counter calling out for a word that sounded for all the world like “pads.”
Like some ridiculous Naked Gun movie, the woman at the counter yelled back “Pads?” or some Czech equivalent and half the room yelled back to her – “Yes – Pads.”
There wasn’t some shelf of magical pink, purple and blue packaged options with varied thickness, silhouettes, fragrances or wings for me to choose from. There was single simple white package being passed overhead like a stoner in a mosh pit until it landed in my hands. It contained the most horrendous thick rectangle-shaped things I’d ever seen in my life. They weren’t even folded and discretely individually wrapped in little plastic envelopes decorated with daisies or butterflies.
To complete my mortification, the professor cheerily thanked everyone in the crowd and the ladies behind the counter for their help in more broken Czech and FINALLY we were on our way.
I’ve never really spoken about that experience with anyone. I never really needed to. The lesson was glaringly obvious. Top-down control of the manufacturing sector meant that Carefree couldn’t create a product to compete with Stayfree, or Always or Kotex… It meant that you got your government sanctioned pads and/or wad’o cotton once a month and got back to work or school. You do your part. You don’t complain. You don’t innovate. And everyone on the block knows when your period is because they can hear you asking for pads at the drugstore.
Capitalism has issues – definitely. People are imperfect, so all of our social systems are subject to manifesting the same flaws we as individuals possess. But for the sake of 14-year-old girls everywhere, think about the consequences before you try to usher in your “revolution.” Now, goodnight, Jon-Boy…