even though they called its producer ‘tea’-mushroom. When the jar contents neared their end with the mushroom wisps scratching the bottom, the jar was simply refilled with water and put aside for a couple of days to prepare the drink again. Women were gladly sharing pieces of the mushroom among themselves because when grown too thick it left no room for refilling the jar.
So, marking the time by the alarm clock next to the mushroom jar, I poured water into the small pan indicated by Mom before leaving, loaded it with an egg, lit the bluish springy fire in the gas stove and put the pan on it…
After exactly a minute and a half of waiting, the water around the egg did not look like being hot, so I decided, okay, let it be a hard-boiled egg. Additional one-and-a-half minutes past, some scanty vapors did start to rise from the pan, besides, the pan’s walls underwater developed lots of small bubbles, and I turned the gas off because I had exact instructions on how to cook boiled eggs…
(…the byword about the first pancake in the batch turning out a sorry lump can be safely expanded with “the first boiled egg is a slushy mess”…)
The military game participants were mostly in sportswear and noticeably reluctant to enter the school building. So all of us crowded together in the yard idling the time in small separate groups. In the one I was with, everybody appreciated the minuscule stitches that kept my shoulder straps in place. I proudly patted the one on my left shoulder—no way to grab at it, eh? Nothing like by those boys who fixed theirs by just a couple of stitches and now their shoulder straps stuck out like a cat's arced back asking to be torn off with just your pinky finger.
At that moment some unfamiliar boy, maybe from the parallel class, started a scrap. He spread me on the ground and tore my shoulder straps in tatters.
(…I never knew how to fight, neither do I now.
Most likely, I just called him “fool!” and ran away into the forest—back home…)
In the forest, I took my jacket off… Instead of the shoulder straps, there only remained a dashed, serrated, frame-like paper-strip under the tight close stitches by a doubled black thread.
I plucked the paper scraps out and scattered over the fallen foliage. Maybe, I even cried full of resentment at being killed so unruly, prematurely, before the start of combat actions, shattering my eager dreams to capture the adversary headquarters…
For some period, my favorite pastime at classes became producing blueprint drawings of my secret shelter located in a cave inside a mighty impenetrable cliff like that one lived by people in