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As a child, and later as a young man, I had the opportunity to read A. Gaidar's story "Hot Stone". I didn't understand two things then:

— How could Ivashko roll a stone up the mountain, so hot that Haydar, saving matches, lit a cigarette on it. And secondly:

— Why didn't the old man, a disabled man who had been disfigured by life, break that stone to rejuvenate himself?

Well, I still don't understand the first one, especially since since the stone heats up to 451 Fahrenheit by itself, apparently there are some nuclear processes with radiation emission, and it's better to avoid it by the tenth road, and not ask a child to roll that stone up the mountain

But a fairy tale is a fairy tale, I don't argue. Let it be.

But I began to understand the second thing in adulthood; most likely, that disabled man from Gaidar was proud of his wounds, because they served him as an indulgence from repression and he had the opportunity to finish his life in a collective farm kindergarten among people who surrounded him with warmth and respect.