Bird food or salty snack

You are probably wondering, why such a headline in the community about school days.

🙂
Although a man learns while he lives (but he doesn't need school for that) my school days are long over.

Now I only have to remember them, my youth, what was learned and the experiences we had as young people.

Sunflower seeds are my favorite pastime with a beer to starve at a sporting event.

But every time, when I find sunflower seeds in my hand, nicely salted and roasted, I remember the sound of nibbling that was heard in a classroom, during math class.

The professor of mathematics, Ljilja, a middle-aged lady, tall and big as a closet, was known as an excellent and very strict professor.

She didn't beat the students when they didn't know the multiplication table (like some here because of handwriting 😕), but she demanded discipline and attention in her lessons.

I knew about her even before I came to the first class. She was my father's class teacher in that same school, and she also taught math to my aunt.
They both told me that she is a good teacher, especially when the students are good.

But to return to the topic of sunflower seeds, why I started writing this post 🙂

In the class with me, in addition to all the others, Kiza also attended those mathematics classes.
The boy is very petite, but very ill-mannered.

In the course of one lesson, at Professor Ljilja's, he was nibbling on a sunflower, sitting in the back bench.
It's not a big noise, but enough to reach the teacher's ears, even with the screeching of the chalk on the blackboard.
She turned to the class and tried to figure out where the sound was coming from. She didn't succeed.
She turned back to the blackboard and continued to explain to us the procedure for solving the problem, when the same sound was heard again.

She turned and started between the benches. She probably didn't hear where the sound was coming from again, but from the sunflower husks on the floor next to Kiza, she concluded that he was nibbling sunflower.
She told him to stop it and pay attention to the lecture.
He tried with an innocent look to get away with the words: "It's not me!", but she returned to the blackboard and continued to explain the task.

When after a few minutes the same sound was heard again, she stopped her explanation, called Kiza to come in front of the board.
He stood in front of her, his hands in the pockets of his long jacket.

"Take your hands out of your pockets when you're standing in front of the professor," she told him.
"What do you have in your pockets?" she asked him.
When he answered "Nothing", she walked up to him, picked him up, carried him to the corner of the classroom where there was a trash can, turned him upside down holding both legs with her hands and shook him (I already mentioned that she was a very large woman, so she could easily hold the short, skinny Kiza).
Sunflower seeds started falling out of his jacket pockets. From one pocket the shell of the eaten one, and from the other pocket the whole grain that should have been eaten (just not in class at school).

We all laughed, but she didn't find it funny.
She shook him several times, he started sobbing and begging to be put down, so she got him back on his feet.
"Go to your place and I didn't hear a single sound from you until the end of class".
Frightened and duly shaken, shaken and with empty pockets, Kiza returned to his desk.
Since then, I have never seen him snacking on sunflower seeds at school or in the schoolyard.

Professor Ljilja retired not long after that, and I remember that situation with a smile on my face every time I put a sunflower seed in my fist.
My friend Kiza has been gone for several years now, and I can say that eating sunflowers reminds me of him and our school days.