In Russia, you pay the blood price for a smile.
You see, temperatures in Novosibirsk can go as low as −40 °C.
When it’s that cold, something really strange happens. Something unexpected, beyond the classic ‘hard to breathe’, ‘icy fire in your lungs’ and ‘phone battery ceases to exist’.
When it’s that cold, your cheeks will freeze.
It is the weirdest and most horrible sensation. It feels as if your skin were made of crispy paper, like an old book that just survived a fire, or a croissant straight out of the oven.
Trying to look cool despite frozen cheeks !
When that happens, there is only one rule: DON’T SMILE.
Because should you smile with frozen cheeks, well, your skin will split and crack like a log in the fire, blood vessels will rupture and your face will bleed. As in, with actual blood.
Not only that, but this simple act of smiling has probably caused irreparable damage to your skin, and your cheeks will forever bear the ‘burst-vessel’ red of an alcoholic’s nose.
So what’s important about my smile?
Well, when the cost of that smile is my face bleeding, it can only mean one thing.
That smile is 100% genuine.
Poka poka,