![]() ![]() Naturally I made no attempt to disillusion them. If I sat through a mathematics test not troubling anyone and calmly waiting for my neighbour to solve the problem everyone attributed this not to my stupidity but to sheer idleness. ![]() Now everything contributed to the building of my image. This was the first crystal to form and it started a vigourous process of crystallisation which I did all I could to assist, so as to become finally crystallised in the preordained direction. It turned out that I was holding the stretcher like an Inveterate Idler. Some pretext for amusement had to be found and found it was. Everyone noticed the way I held the stretcher. instructor in charge of us also noticed the way I held the stretcher. The point is that on that far-off day when we were reclaiming the wasteland one of the boys drew attention to the way I held the hand barrow we were using for carrying soil. Eucalyptus grows very fast, so anyone who wants to feel like a sentimental patriarch can plant a eucalyptus tree and live to see its crown towering high above him, its leaves tinkling in the breeze like the toys on a New Year tree.īut that's not the point. Then it was said that the single seedlings, being in direct proximity to the clusters and envying them with a thoroughly good sort of envy, had made an effort and caught up.īe that as it may, when I come back to my hometown nowadays, I sometimes take it easy in the shade of those now enormous trees and feel like a sentimental patriarch. In a few years a beautiful grove of eucalyptus trees grew up on that wasteland and it was quite impossible to tell where the clusters and where the single seedlings had been. Admittedly, when there were not many seedlings and too much wasteland left, we began to put only one seedling in each hole, thus giving the new, progressive method and the old method the chance to show their worth in free competition. We planted out the patch with eucalyptus seedlings, using the cluster method, which was an advanced method for those times. Strange though it may seem, we actually succeeded. When I was at school the whole class was one day given the task of turning a patch of seaside wasteland into a place of cultured rest and recreation. Now here is an example from my own experience. One of the rather amusing features of human nature is that each of us tries to live up to an image imposed upon him by other people. It implies that we, too, could indulge in such idiosyncrasies if we liked, but we don't like because we have no use for them. Because, you see, talking about them makes us aware of our own healthy normality. There is nothing more enjoyable than discussing certain odd habits of our acquaintances. Let's talk about some of the amusing sides of human nature, as embodied in people we know. Let's talk about things we don't have to talk about, pleasant things. Philosophy, culturology, history, psychologyįazil Iskander - Forbidden Fruit and Other Stories. ![]()
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