Recalling Buratino

Recalling Buratino
Someone threw away a huge stack of children's books downstairs near the mailboxes, where people usually discard extra clothes, shoes, and household items. In our neighborhood, full of hipsters, who move frequently, they often leave behind good, often new, things. I started examining the books, and some of them were very interesting. I had already started reading children's books before this; they often condensed what is presented on hundreds of pages for adults into a few words, making it very clear and interesting, tailored to a naive and sensitive reader.
I remember my favorite book from childhood, "The Adventures of Buratino." Or rather, some neighboring girls, already high school students, took me to the cinema for the first time when I was three years old and some months. It was my first movie, an Italian production called "The Adventures of Buratino." The film simply amazed me. The girls liked it too, and they also told me that there is a book, and perhaps, there is a continuation about Buratino. The idea of the book stuck in my mind, and I could only think about that. However, there was no such book in the store. The girls said there was a rural library in the same club where we watched the movie, and almost any book could be borrowed there, but you had to sign up. So I thought and decided to go to the library myself. It was on our street, but I had to pass by a flock of geese that I was very afraid of, especially since my grandmother had read me a book about how geese took away a boy. I wasn't very afraid that they would take me away, as I felt mature and big enough, but I was afraid they would pinch me with their beaks, as they stretched their necks towards passersby and cried. But everything went well, and I reached the library. When I entered, the librarian was somewhat surprised at my arrival and that I had come to sign up for the library on my own. "Can you read?" she asked. "No, I can't read." "When you learn to read, then come," the librarian said.
I was a little confused; I had no idea what reading meant and how to learn to read. Of course,  first I asked my grandmother, "How do you learn to read?" "You need to know the letters," my grandmother replied. Every day, I demanded that she teach me the letters. My grandmother had three years of education in a parish school before the revolution, and she taught me the old names of letters, not their sounds. I had already learned all the letters, but I couldn't read, and my grandmother and I couldn't understand, what was going on. I remember that near our house, people hung a newspaper, and people gathered in groups, reading aloud. I ran up and stood among them, trying to understand how they understood what was written. But I looked and didn't understand anything.
Neighbor girls, high school students, explained to me that besides names, letters also have sounds, how they are pronounced in words. I got confused in sounds and names. But one day, standing in front of another newspaper with reading people, it suddenly dawned on me, and the letters merged into words, and I understood that I was reading. Such joy overwhelmed me; I ran and shared my happiness with my grandmother. She took out some book and pointed with her finger for me to read what was printed, and I read it. My grandmother confirmed that indeed, I could read.
So.  Buratino played a decisive role in my early literacy. I don't know why I'm writing all this. I was just recently struck by the realization, that Buratino, a boy made of wood, is a metaphor for a drawing pencil that makes us artists. Buratino was made from wood, like a pencil. His long nose symbolized curiosity, like a writing pen that makes us writers, scientists, researchers. The Adventures of Buratino end with Buratino finding a golden key to a door with a painting of the cosmos, and behind it is a spaceship carrying Buratino, Papa Carlo, and the actors of the theater to another planet. There, Karabas-Barabas, exploiting poor actors and managing them with a whip and cruel punishments, won't exist. In the end, the goal of human art and science is to expand the horizons of exploration and mastery of space and time.
On another planet, there will be no such  cat and fox who suggested to Buratino to bury his golden coins and wait for a huge tree with many such golden coins to grow. In the same way, I invested almost thirty thousand in Tesla, believing Musk's promises that they would increase by one and a half times by spring, and almost lost everything, and my dream that a person would fly to Mars in 2024, as Musk promised in one of the interviews, will not come true. No, Buratino wasn't greedy; on the contrary, he was very kind and wanted to help his Papa Carlo, who carved him from wood because the log seemed to him singing and then sold his jacket to buy Buratino textbooks for school. But Buratino didn't go to school because he was attracted to the theater, and he sold his textbooks to buy a ticket to the theater, and that's where his adventures began. Karabas-Barabas realized that he had found a new talent that could be exploited to gain advantage and grow his belly, tormenting his actors. But Buratino made everyone free and happy.
Ah, I need to reread my favorite book again.