Boyhood

In those years, even in the most intellectual families, it was not customary and actually considered counterproductive to teach children to read before starting school (“the child would be bored in class”). But my mother was sure that her “treasure” devouring one thick volume after another would be a straight “A” student and infected me with this confidence too. Alas, the first days at school turned out to be a real shock to me. The fact that I could read fluently did not help me at all. Having just one time relished my virtuosic ability to read, the teacher Nina Vasilyevna Smirnova did not call on me any more, concentrating on teaching the overwhelming majority “Russian oral skills”. There were exactly 40 students in the class.