Let’s face it. We Romanians have a problem with communism. We are frustrated, you would say, by all those years of repressions. If after 89 we’ve tried hard to elude the dictatorship of Ceasca now we try even harder to revitalize, and oh Lord how much we try. It’s obviously we’re stuck on this so hard, that we’ve remained with a spot on our brain, or an important lack.

We chit chat with someone about  weather, we then jump at our salary and roads, until now our conversations go on their usual way, then a little more talk about Gigi, his latest mistake and after that inevitable we really have to say something like: „during Ceausescu it was different”( followed by a sigh, of course). What does „different” suppose to mean?  Whispered softly and with some sort of regret in the voice, the tone bugs me. Actually it is supposed to bug everyone, not only me.

I’ve just realized that a lot of years will pass until we will succeed in throwing away the clothes of communism. There is a saying; I can’t remember by whom, that goes like this: we won’t get rid of communism until the last man from that era is not dead. If it’s true, it means we still have to wait a long, long time. Until then all the nice hags along with uncles form countryside that resemble Moromete and which understand so well politics like they make ballet, will continue to have in their house, near candles and icons, where they cross themselves, the portrait of the Benefactor. You know which one, the one in the picture, which looks lackadaisical at you when you turn the first page of abecedarium.

There’s no happiness in this. Each one of us knows at least one of these kinds of people. Yes, I know. I’ve never caught that time and I don’t know how it was. But I do know something: how it was not. And it wasn’t good at all. And it is not their problem. They have their own settings, they’ve grown in that time, got used to it and now they cannot get rid of it. But us, the others, we stay, listen and we shut up. This is the point where suddenly we become shy like we are young and we did something terrible and an old man with his great experience reproof us. We don’t want to contradict them; we don’t want to do anything. We conclude that everyone has an opinion and it is better to stay out of problems. It will be better if they would have regretted the lives of millions of people who suffered then. Shouldn’t we riot, at least as a proof of respect for those who died? Is this that „different”?

Until the last communist there is a whole country out there who has some regrets. This country- you can find it at the corners, in the street cars or in the front of what was once called „consume cooperative”, making big eyes-life is hard- while the cars pass undisturbed. They groan as a conclusion of the hard day: „ it was much better back then!”