After we left the market, I asked Mom why the old woman agreed to sell two buckets for only twenty rubles instead of twenty-four.
“Don’t you understand such simple things?” my mom said. “The more the old woman sells, the more money she earns. Therefore, she wanted to sell as much as possible. She will sell at a lower price if you buy more.”
Then I asked why everything is the other way around in stores. In stores they will not sell cheaper if you want to buy more. In stores they will not sell you anything at all if you want to buy more. And of course, Mom was again frightened that we would be sent to prison, so she told me to stop asking questions.
I did not want to argue with Mom, so I stopped talking. But to make me feel better, Mom remembered how two old women had been arguing at the market. They kept yelling at each other something we could barely understand. But somehow it was very funny.
And so, like this, something funny happened every day. Even on the last day, when we were leaving and were already at the bus stop to go to the station, even then something funny happened.
Our landlord ran up to us and gave us a letter from Dad. Mom began to read it to me. Dad wrote that he had received the letter from Mom, in which she wrote about the bucket. And he was asking Mom whether it was possible to ask someone to fix it.
When Mom finished reading this letter to me, we started to laugh and could not stop. And we laughed until our bus came. But as soon as the bus came, we stopped laughing. We stopped laughing because it turned out that there were a lot of people from the resort on the bus and there was no more room left for Mom and me. We were lucky that our landlord had not left yet. He turned out to be a good friend of the bus driver. And then it just so happened that there were seats for us.
Later, when Mom and I were sitting on the bus, Mom told me, “It is a good thing that the landlord brought us Dad’s letter in time. Otherwise, we would not have known what to do with the bucket.” And again we started to laugh. And we laughed all the way to the station.
We only stopped laughing on the train because Mom started to worry that I had not gained much weight over the summer. And she decided that she would start to give me food with more calories.
On the train, Mom told me that before we left, she decided to check whether Aunt Tamara remembered the number of the building in Kharkov where the tickets were being sold. Mom thought that Aunt Tamara might have forgotten that she should add one to the age of her son to get the number.
When Mom asked Aunt Tamara about the number of the building, Aunt Tamara asked Mom what building number she was talking about. And Mom told her that she was talking about the building in Kharkov where they sold tickets. But Aunt Tamara then asked Mom, “What tickets?”
But Mom did not let me laugh at Aunt Tamara. Because you should not laugh at those whose head was hit by a wardrobe.
Доказательство
Вчера на уроке математики нам объясняли, что такое доказательство. Учительница — математичка наша — сказала, что в математике не просто так вот говорят что попало. В математике всё должно быть строгим. Самое главное в математике — это доказательство. И сейчас она нам расскажет, что это такое.
А я несколько раз уже слышал от разных людей про доказательство, но объяснить толком никто ничего не мог. Только однажды кто-то мне сказал, что доказательство — это когда кто-то что-то доказывает.
И вчера я очень обрадовался, что учительница нам собирается всё объяснить. И вот учительница ещё раз сказала нам, что доказательство — это самое важное в математике. Потом она добавила, что доказательство — это когда кто-то доказывает. И что в книгах математических и в учебниках по математике, если написано «Доказательство», то, значит, после этого и будет доказательство. Ещё учительница сказала, что доказывать всё надо строго. И что в математике всякая каша совершенно не годится.
Тут учительница спросила у нас, понятно нам или нет. И многие замотали головами, мол, понятно. Тогда учительница меня спросила, как я понял, что такое доказательство. А я, честно говоря, ничего не понял. Но я всё-таки ответил ей, что доказательство — это когда кто-то сказал, что сейчас будет доказательство или написал «Доказательство». Вот после этого и идёт доказательство.