Corticum

Verum est quod pro salute fit mendacium
The truth is the salvation of lies.

A familiar TV director, Maxim, told me this heart attack story of his childhood:

"I was twelve years old, not more, when one day a happy dad came back from work and shouted from the threshold: "Maxim, run here! Look what I have!”
With these words, Daddy got out of his pocket coat the most real sea shirt.
Dad then knocked on the "four-hour" and Uncle Volodya - my mom's brother, presented him with such an elegant gift.
And Uncle Volodya, by the way, was the real Admiral.
It is natural that on that day I slept with the cortex under the pillow, risking in the total darkness to swallow both my eyes, I didn’t just sleep, but every second I pulled it out of the blades.
Again, it is quite natural that the next day after school I brought home the whole boy half of the class to boast of my symbol of the ruler of the world.
I don’t remember what I was thinking about, but for some reason I gave in to the excuses and agreed to hang a kitchen cutting board on the wall to try to put a cork in it.
A movie about the Indians!
Only one throw was enough and a tip of three centimeters broke away from the cortex.
My friends kicked me on the shoulder and immediately evaporated.
I stand in the middle of the room, in one hand a broken cortex, in the other its tip, I stand and think: but I still have some four hours to live. In the evening, Daddy, Mom, Uncle Volodya with a bottle will come and say:
“Maxim, did you accidentally touch the cortex with wet hands? There will be divorces, and I will kill him.
Let’s bring him here!”

The guy I was handcuffed, in the house a bunch of tools, and I had a mature plan on how to delay my death.
At three o’clock I buried a broken cloth on a stone, it wasn’t bad at all. Then I fine scratched the scratches and the cork became like new, only six centimeters shorter. In general, if anyone else would take him in the hands, except Uncle Volod, he could have run out.
I pushed the cortex into the scissors and suddenly realized: "But the scissors will betray me, they are too long compared to the current cut of the cortex.
I pretended, and the edak, and the time was pushing and I decided, scattered the copper end of the knives, scattered it, and nailed off the "surplus" piece of knives with a knife.
He twisted the copper stuff back, struck it with ticks and even set up the cries back.
At this moment, the keys sounded in the castle and Daddy and Mom and Uncle Volodye entered the house.
They didn’t have time to drink enough for Daddy and eat, as Daddy shouted, “Maximko, did you accidentally not touch the cortex with wet hands? There will be divorces, and I will kill him.
Bring him here quickly. Look at what uncle Voldemort brought.
With these words, Dad put a lengthy wooden box on the table, opened it, I looked inside and cooled. Inside, a clear silhouette of our cortex appeared.
Not alive – not dead – I pulled the father’s castrated gift and began to watch with horror as the father tried to put it in his legitimate place and could not understand why the shell silhouette was much larger than the cortex itself.
The thoughtful uncle Volodya took the cork in his hands, pulled it out of the knife, looked at it, turned back and said, "It's all right, it needs to be kept a little pushed out of the knife, so that the knife was visible, this is the way."
The father scratched his neck and said, “Look, I’t guess the time. It really looks more interesting than just the knives.”

Life gradually began to return to my dead body and by the evening almost completely returned.
Late at night, when Uncle Volodya kissed his mother for goodbye and told him about his father, he approached me and whispered quietly to my ear:
Maximka, your mother Let’s get along – the father won’t know anything, the officer’s word, but you have to tell me – Well, you did it? I want to understand! You were going to take him to school and he didn’t fit in your suitcase?! to
- I, I, I... threw in the board and the tip broke. Uncle Voldemort, I will not be like that anymore.
Thank God, you are not an idiot at all. You do well, you don’t go under. and free.

P.S

Thirty years have passed since then, but I haven’t told my dad anything so far. And not because I am afraid, just since I was a child, I have repeatedly witnessed how he argued with his friends, proving that his cortex is so short, because he is not a simple, but an admiral and even an old admiral present at the same time, whispering, confirming his father's rightness...