The day the summer counting of time began (aka daylight saving, though that term never made sense to me)*. It was a bit fucked up in the beginning, to get up an hour earlier on monday, but we got used to it quickly. It was much crazier later, when the afternoons stretched into infinity and sunsets waited until 20:30.
It would be interesting to find what official explanation for accepting this folly was published, and why was it really done. I guess the mister comrades wanted to stay in sync with the neighbors, as everyone else seemed to be doing it. Over the years it made less and less sense, but this 1984 we were just coming to terms with it.
At about this time, or maybe what I remember happened in april, this year or next, I had one Ahmet Aziri among the students, I'd say he's an islamic Rroma, by origin at least, poor but bright kid, who insisted on trying to not be too smart and to do exactly as much as required to pass, not a bit more. During the class he'd do more than that, but when it's a written task or a spot test, he'd do that minimum alone, submit it and leave. I almost got the idea to rough him up, for so intendedly lowering his mark, and also demotivating the others at that, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Some time in the fall, when that class was already a former one, some passed some repeated some quit, I met him on the busodrome, selling cigarettes off an improvised stall. What are you doing here? Well, you see, a bit of business. Why don't you get a job, you're qualified. Never mind that, this is just as good.
Now whether this happened this spring, or one of the following two... oma went into growing poultry again, and a couple of pigs. She'd buy the piglets somewhere, but for the poultry we two had to wait for delivery at Valpovka's shop in Đure Jakšića [street]. On the day when chickens or turkey chicks were deliverred, the place was rife with people waiting, and they'd disperse in about the same time as they would if it was done in an orderly manner, but nope, the folks were impatient, fussing around, nervous, prone to disputes... I was bitching about it a lot, but then still went along, it's my mother-in-law. She always had this gift to make work for others... I'd usually take dad's škodilak, but at times we'd just take our bikes, tie a box on each paktreger (package rack over the rear wheel) and pedal away.
To save on fodder, she'd feed them various greenery from her garden. So it happened that she fed the turkey chicks, just two days old, with green onion leaves, after which they all fell, like dead. The onion does have some narcotic effect, imperceptible in grownups or humans, but for these it was just enough. They fell asleep, but there were these two hours of fuss and panic until she understood what happened. But then they woke up and grew big later, had good drumsticks.
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* I misremember - it was 27-III-1983..