Handkerchiefs back then
Riga, 1989. She is six years old. There are not many toys and clothes available for children. However, approximately two times a year the family - the girl, her brother and their cousins, received a big carton box from America. Their distant relatives lived there. Usually, there were colorful clothes and chewing gums in the boxes. This time she discovered something new - beautiful and soft papers, decorated with flowers and ornaments. How beautiful! She placed her dolls on them to sleep, and decorated the living room with the papers. The new world is full of flowers and colors! Then her father enters the room. They start talking. He says that in America people use these papers for blowing their nose. She is really surprised: "But they are from paper. How do they wash them?" In the Soviet Union they used cloth handkerchiefs and washed them afterwards. Her father explains to her that they don't wash them - they just throw them away and get new ones instead. She can't believe it! What a waste of resources! How can they use such precious things for something as banal as blowing their nose!