The pencil case
September 1998.
It’s my first day of school.
I’m five years old, and just a few seconds ago, I discovered the meaning of the word “pouch”.
The teacher told us to take the pencil cases and put them on the desk. All my classmates turned to the backpacks and pulled out these colourful things.
I did the same movement myself, but there’s no case in my backpack.
I knew that, but for a moment I thought it might magically appear.
Unfortunately, it didn’t.
The teacher keeps talking, but I’ve already stopped listening to her. My eyes are fixed on the pencil cases of the classmate sitting in front of me.
It’s orange, beautiful, big. It has three zippers.
In my head, that’s three floors.
I’ll describe it like that when I get home this afternoon to Mom and Dad.
“I need a pouch. It’s a three-floors thing.”
We’re not Italian, we don’t have proper language management, we never will.
Then they all open them. The pencil pouches are beautiful. Inside there are pencils and coloured markers. They are different, but they all have two things in common: they are coloured and have three zippers. I really, really like them.
I look back at…
