Mommy, did grandma drive you to school? No, I used to go to school by bus, standing on its stairs. I hold on to one strong uncle's hand and with the other getting centered with my briefcase. Did you use to have an Whatsapp group? No, I didn't. And how did you manage to talk to your friends? I'd knock on the door or shout them at the balcony. And if you happen to take a liking to a boy, you pressed the heart button? No, I'd write him a note and put hearts on 'i', instead of dots. What did you do when you didn't want to go to school? I used to eat chalk. What did you use to do for fun? We used to stand in gigantic queues. Mom, have you seen the dinosaurs?
(Translated by Iulia-Teodora Urea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In May 2021, the group has 6.400 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficţiuni Reale. 
