People had always collected the strangest things. They can collect, why not, even empty wrappings.

As we had relatives in the West or close friends, who enjoyed this privilege, we received boxes with different kinds of Western food products ? coffee, chocolate, chewing gum, candies, chocolate eggs and all sorts of different sweets. Their hallo of exoticness came not only from their scarcity or their taste, which could not have been compared with anything that was available in Romania, but also, at least for us the children, from the wrappings.  Shining, swishing, golden or silvery, with all kinds of drawings or surprises and with all kinds of shapes, the wrappings were the only ones left, after what they had hidden, the contents was long gone, no matter how cautiously we consumed them, only on expressly chosen occasions.

I kept them in a big coffee bag, carefully and beautifully arranged. They formed this way a collection that I was examining from time to time. On the other hand, we could exchange them with the others girls in the class, and they became very important when we had to write down in a diary, because we could use them to adorn the page, the more motley and shinier it was, the more admired it was, and this definitely led to the upsurge of popularity of the person who had arranged the page.

The collection and the symbolic and affective investment of these wrappings, was in the 80?s a widely spread practice. The instant coffee boxes were used to keep the sugar, simple coffee, while the Coca-Cola cans became pencil holders, the empty bottles from the foreign drinks were displayed with pride in the window of the bookcase, together with the collection of china. They preserved this way, the pleasure of using Western objects, which became a measurement of prestige. (160)

COLLECTING

The practice was absolutely compulsory for all those belonging to one form of education or another. One collected the most diverse things: paper, old iron things, bottles and jars, medicinal plants, acorn and conkers. Each student was obliged to carry out a certain quantitative norm of the above-mentioned products. There were even prizes to be given out, on which occasion, in the most festive atmosphere, the most ?collector? was congratulated for the material gathered for recycling. The prize?! Some ?waste paper?: ?The Book of the Young Pioneer?, ?Poems about My Country and People?, etc. (11)