Abstract
It has been said that childhood is shorter in the underdeveloped countries than in the affluent ones, because in the former most children start earlier to fend for themselves: they have no pocket money, and their parents are too busy to spend time on them. They are on their own at around age 12 years. My own childhood ended at the beginning of the autumn of 1932, when I moved from my friendly and protective elementary school to the high school attached to the University of Buenos Aires. This was the old and prestigious Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, which occupied a huge building in the French academic style, characterized by fake stonework. It was just one block from the Plaza de Mayo, the main civic square of the republic, born there in 1810.