Soso wasn't the smartest of kids. He never got the knack of the left-right thing, constantly mixing up the two, which, by the way, might have had interesting political and ideological consequences. However, with all the leftist/rightist deviations off the true Leninist course which have been unveiled over the last years a little wavering around the middle should probably not be a bad thing. But most of all his revolutionary pedigree was first-class. His forebears over three generations never had held a penny to their name and his father had joined the Red Guards of his own free will, at a time when the white alternative was still around and going strong.
So when young Soso declared his intention to become a pilot and fly aeroplanes after having seen the light and elegant lines of the majestic ANT-20 as it took to the skies on a lecture tour near his home town his teachers were initially sceptical. The capability to tell left from right seemed to them quite indispensable in a revolutionary, let alone in one who moved through the air high above the ground. Soso, however, was not to be dissuaded from his dream and replied that he perfectly knew to tell up from down, well most of the time at least, which was of course much more important when in flight. So the teachers played for time as there were still some years of school ahead for the young man. When the time came the headmaster proposed to go for a career in the Cheka but Soso had firmly decided to serve the revolution high up in the sky rather than down in a soundproof cellar. His application for military flying school was approved and he reported for duty just a few weeks befor the nazi-fascist aggression against the motherland.
What Soso was not yet fully aware of was the fact that the plane he was to be trained on was the unmistakable Il-2 Sturmovik and the "high in the sky" part of flying was somewhat limited to the close vicinity of the ground. But Soso had no time to complain as his training already fully utilized the better part of his intellectual capacity as it were. Well, maybe a transfer, further on down the line ... Luckily for him, the training material was completely to his liking, easy to read even for slow readers, in bold letters and straightforward.
But even better, the old left-right problem was treated in the official training textbook in no uncertain terms and in a manner that clarified the matter for Soso permanently.
And so he learned all the things he needed to know about his plane, even complicated things made easily understandable by the clear illustrations of this glorious achievment of socialist pedagogy.
To be sure, Soso was not perfect and sometimes, though with much decreasing frequency, he still went the wrong way but after some navigational training
He found the target range with sufficient ease. Once having got there his aiming skills were much better and he put his trigger fingers to consistent good use.
After Soso graduated from military flying school he got his first posting to the elite =69.GShaP= where he is now proudly exercising his newly-learned skills and acting his part in the struggle for the motherland.
