Read official textbooks and stationery

By Edmée Pardo

When I was a child there were five official sources of knowledge: the textbook, the encyclopedia, the dictionary, the annual almanac and monographs.

The stationery store of my house was around the corner, like all the stationery stores of my childhood; a more or less long walk, which did not lead to a corner but to the accessory of a house in the middle of the street. There I would find schoolmates dressed in uniform and others in street clothes I hardly recognized. The store, furnished with shelves full of little drawers, was the place of my doom. I would spend long minutes looking at and longing for pencils of different sizes, colors, brands and prices; pencil sharpeners; a fascinating row of erasers of different materials and uses: crumb, for pencils, for ink, for typewriters, for drawing, scented, transparent, of various sizes and shapes. But I would go to the stationery store with just enough money to buy a monograph as part of my school obligations.