FIRST DAY OF TRAINING

 Today it was the first day of my training at the Annexe Room. I thought the place would be like any dwelling, but actually it was very different. There were upholstered chairs and very luxurious sofas. The table legs weren´t straight, they were curved and slender. The room was full of books… Not just the few books of rules you find in dwellings, but lots of bookcases, crammed with them.

The Giver seemed to be old, but he told me he isn´t. He said he was tired. I could see it in his pale eyes. The Giver is kind and generous. He seems to understand me. I´m so happy that he is my trainer!

My training consists in receiving memories. The Giver passes me past memories of the whole world just by touching me. I close my eyes and it is as if I were living the memories. Nobody in the community has these memories. They come from a very distant past. The training seems to be great. I have learnt a lot and experienced new things, and it was only my first day!!

The first memory I received was lovely. I was on a hill full of snow, the first strange word I learnt. (Snow has disappeared with climate control. And that´s why we´ve lost the word) It was great fun because I slid down the hill on a vehicle called “sledge”. Then, the Giver transmitted another pleasant memory: the memory of sunshine. ..

As I was so happy, I wondered what the Chief Elder had meant when she told me that the training would include pain. I asked the Giver. I wished I hadn´t! To show me, he gave me a painful, awful memory: I was on a place with grass and the sky was bright. The sun was very hot. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain at the elbow. It was awful! I wanted to wake up. Finally I did and I was relieved to see that my skin wasn´t actually hurt, even though the pain remained. What I had experienced was sunburnt.

The training is very interesting. I didn´t know what the world was like before climate control. I thought the world has always been this way.

I´m looking forward to my next session but I hope it won´t include any pain. Sunburnt is awful. I am happy we´ve done away with it!