...and keeping them sometimes

I wanted to write about the August 21. You know (or more probably, you don't know), anniversary of the Soviet invasion in 1968. But I somehow forgot it around the right date and it's a bit late now, I'm afraid. And, after all, who cares about something happening nearly 40 years ago.
But, today is the first school day in this lousy country. I went to work quite late, when the kids were probably let out after all sorts of stupid speeches ('I hope you had nice holidays and despite the fact that school sucks, I hope you'll enjoy it. You country needs you to be valuable citizens so you will happily work on being valuable citizens, blah, blah.' One thinks a lot about being a valuable citizen at the age of six.. indeed. I wonder whether the firstt graders know what valuable is. Or citizen, for that matter. And anyone at the age of 15 has different problems than their value for motherland.... But, let's conssider laughing at the school director's speech a tradition).. our office building is across the street from a basic school. I can watch the little bastards while sitting at my table. There's a portico with columns at the entrance to our building, reasonably well placed around the dorner form the school and shadowed by thick yew shrubs and the innocent little angels go to smoke to the portico - stairs to sit and spit on (does anyone know why teenagers have to spit so much when smoking? I asked several accomplished smokers whether cigarettes make one salivate and the answer was a general no from smokers of something handmade and smelling worse than camel shit as well as from smokers of something expensive and smelling as diluted camel shit*... maybe some smoking teenager could explain? I don't know any in person. Or is that spitting caused by some hormones like, say, acne?)... and when I was arriving, I had to step over a teenage girl (probably girl, it was wearing big earrings and a pink t-shirt) smoking somehthing awful and spitting on the stairs. I thrust a bad look at her, she looked back, thinking something about overage people being put to sleep automatically or something...
At work I read thru articles about schools - half of them is sentimental crap about holidays ending, how sad, poor children having to work again, how sad, another theme is Children are expensive.. and the rest is about the proposed reforms of the school system. Whatever is happening, it's mostly paperwork although the only solution would in my opinion be something along the lines of humanitary bombing and starting it all again. I'm soo happy to be graduating soon....
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*Yes, I'm an aggressive non-smoker. Smokers are disgusting, smell bad, make the shared air smell bad and.. and anyway.