She does not clearly remember how her first day at school was, but she remembers getting ready for it. A primary school teacher, Ms. Salkyn, who was also related to her dad, came to collect names of school aged kids. She was not very tall with longish hair, a single woman with a bag and some papers. So, she was asking questions about the girl’s preparedness for school and the girl showed her wraps from sweets that she was collecting. She was collecting them to buy a car as she thought it was money. So, Ms. Salkyn said how come such a big girl like her did not have any idea about money and that those were just sweets wraps.

The girl was disappointed. She had been collecting these wraps for a long time and the wraps were beautifully put into a pile, straightened up carefully and organized in a certain way: the inside of the wraps looking down, the shiny side to the top, very neatly.

The girl was sad that she did not realize it was not money and those wraps had no significance. This teacher was quite cruel to introduce her to reality and shame the girl for not being clever enough. When granny asked the girl why she stopped collecting the wraps, the girl just said because it was not money. 

The girl clearly remembers that after her meeting with the teacher, she went to the cliffs near her grandmother’s house and remembers throwing them into the wind with such a huge disappointment. The girl was very sad. The wraps- “the money” smelt so nice like the chocolates that were once inside these wraps. She felt that bitter disappointment – she thought she had plans and they were destroyed with this thing called school. The cliffs were quite high and dangerous; the wind was strong and the wraps flew away in an instant. The girl does not remember how she returned back home, but she never told this story to anyone, because she was concerned that people might think she was not clever enough, not realizing that wraps were not money.

Remembering now she gets scared about health and safety issues in the former Soviet Union too – how come a six-year-old was let to the cliffs alone. Falling from there would have caused death or severe injuries.