A Small Man With a Big Memory

written by Željko Ivanjek

 

All parents are lazy. Children think that they’re lazy only when it comes to doing something for them, which makes them angry, but in truth, they’re lazy about dong things for themselves too, which is why they should be pitied.

 

Anyway, Andrej Ivić begged his parents in vain to take him to his “good old kindergarten” at the other end of Zagreb, in Folnegovićevo naselje. Being seven, he could hardly travel by anything else but a tricycle, and his parents would not even let him go as far as the nearest store. There was little time, as they’d take a nap in the afternoon and watch TV in the evening. Still, his persuasive insistence first softened his mother’s heart, and then they conspired to persuade the only driver in the family, dad, to start the engine of their old Zastava and give up fifteen minutes of his time to take his son to the kindergarten near the mosque and fifteen more minutes to take them back home.