I had some insomnia last night. I lay in the dark and thought about my friends. Those young faces and thin figures came one after another in the night. I felt like I was sitting alone on a night train, watching their silhouettes imprinted on the cold windows. No one noticed my silent departure. The reason why I developed such sentimentality was because I received a call from a friend. His difficult life made me feel sad and helpless.
I remembered some names in the dark, and spent some time connecting these names with some intermittent plots. These names and plots formed the backbone of my boyhood memories.
1. Yang Mingwei
In junior high school, students who are close to each other usually live close to each other, so that they can be invited to go home together after school. . Yang Mingwei's home is very close to me, in a dilapidated, dark attic. In my memory, I have never met his parents. He has been living with his elderly grandmother. We all like to go to his house to play, because he has a separate room upstairs where we will not be disturbed and interfered by adults. Every weekend, there would always be 6 or 7 classmates pouring into that small room, either playing a poker game called "Gongzhu", or lying on a dirty bed and listening to songs by Little Tigers, or even more Most of the time it's aimless chatting.
Once Yang Mingwei mysteriously told me that he planted a Datura flower on his windowsill, and the fruit it produced could be used as a drug. So I began to look forward to it for a long time, going every week to see if the datura flower had produced magical fruits. Finally one day, we carefully picked a round fruit together, dried it, ground it into powder, and soaked it in wine. We imagine that if someone takes a sip of this wine, they immediately lose consciousness. We are very excited that such scenes that appear endlessly in martial arts novels will be played out in reality. On the weekend again, other students gathered in the small attic became our test subjects. Several students drank such mandala wine, but without exception, they all became more lively and energetic under the stimulation of alcohol. , showing no signs of losing consciousness, my first in vivo experiment ended in disappointment.
Yang Mingwei fell in love with a quiet girl in his class, but was too shy to speak. So I ghostwritten a love letter for him. But this exaggerated and empty love letter did not impress the girl. Yang Mingwei's first love failed just like his datura wine. This girl passed away prematurely due to illness while I was in college. When I heard the news, while feeling sorry for a young life, I also thought of Yang Mingwei, only to realize that we had lost contact for a long time. After graduating from junior high school, he dropped out of school and went to work in a city whose name I forgot. When I saw him again, his originally thin body had become very strong, and his strong muscles showed that he was engaged in a very labor-intensive job. When he left home again, we lost contact.
Now Yang Mingwei works as a taxi driver in his hometown. We occasionally meet at class reunion dinners, and he becomes more and more silent.
At that time, classmates who often appeared in Yang Mingwei’s small attic also included:
Chen Jian. This guy has the same birthday as me, and now he has successfully joined the judicial team.
Hu Yuanhua. He said two sentences that impressed me deeply. The first sentence: "Wang Jimu, except for studying better than me, I am better than you in everything else." The second sentence: "Wang Jimu, it is a pleasure to chat with you. things". The second sentence talks about the night he saw him off before he left his hometown to work. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Liu Bo. The captain of the junior high school football team had a vigorous puppy love. Now, like me, I am an IT migrant worker.
Zhong Longfei. Exquisite billiards skills and proficiency in all gambling-related entertainment projects. It's sad to pass away in a car accident.
2. Seven Wolves
It was time to go to the first year of high school. One night after self-study, 7 boys with excess energy came to the dark stadium and pooled their money to buy some beer. , after three rounds of drinking, they gave their temporary organization a rather disgusting name: Seven Wolves. These seven people are Lei Yue, Zheng Zheng, Zhu Peng, Gui Wenqiang, Xian Yuanping, Yan Chang and Wang Jimu.
Lei Yue felt that other members of the organization, Wolf, had dirty thoughts, obscene words, and despicable actions. He quickly turned to the bright side and left this vulgar organization.
What classmate Gui Wenqiang did took the action plan of the vulgar organization Septwolves to the extreme. This guy studied painting for only two days, and now he is so crazy that he considers himself an artist. He grew long hair, drove a motorcycle around the city all day long, and picking up girls was like chopping melons and vegetables. A classic case is that this guy was in an Internet cafe one day and saw a pretty girl, so he secretly wrote down her QQ number behind someone else's back. After some clever talk, he fell in love with the girl that night. On behalf of the organization, I strongly condemn such heinous behavior.
Zhu Peng’s family has a lot of tapes. On weekend nights, we like to go to the rooftop of his house, drink beer, and listen to Beyond’s music over and over again. The lights of the city flickered on and off, and the Yangtze River surged past under the starry sky.
Zheng Zheng is a very loyal friend. Once we went to the school printing room to steal the final exam papers.
Our division of responsibilities was: he went into the printing room to steal papers, and I was responsible for guarding the door. When a teacher patrolling the building passed by, I lacked effective means to convey this signal to him. As a result, the noise he made inside revealed his whereabouts, and he sprained his ankle while trying to escape by jumping out of the window and was captured on the spot. During the subsequent interrogation, he insisted that he was fighting alone and had no other allies, which enabled me to escape unscathed.
After graduating from college, I returned to Chengdu to work. At that time, I was working in sales for a ceramics company, and the business was booming. From time to time we would drink and chat together, and he would always pay the bill. After a period of time, he encountered difficulties in his work and his life began to become difficult. He borrowed a sum of money from me in 2005. At that time, I was renovating my house and was in debt myself, but I still sent him a sum that was not small at the time. Since his job has not improved, he has not been able to repay the money. After that, our relationship became a little delicate. I never took the initiative to call him again because I was afraid that he would think I was collecting debts. He rarely contacted me out of some embarrassment.
Xian Yuanping is my in-laws. His wife and my wife have also been close friends for many years. The two women always laughed at the fact that the friendship between Xian Yuanping and me was just between family members, and we scoffed at this comment. Xian Yuanping transferred to my class when he was in the second grade of junior high school. He was older and taller than his classmates, and he quickly showed the temperament of a big brother who takes the lead. I clearly remember that one summer day after school, we went swimming in the river together. On the way back, under the sky full of sunset, he told the deafening truth: "Actually, a man's pleasure only lasts for a few seconds." I was 14 years old that year, and his remarks started my ignorant adolescence.
Xian Yuanping is a person who has high demands on himself. He is never satisfied with what he has achieved. With his unremitting efforts, his reputation finally reached its peak in high school. He was given the nickname "Xianyu Demon", and his reputation was so great that no one could surpass him for a while. Once he mysteriously told me that a movie called "Dancing Girl" was being played in the cinema. He had already seen it. The scene was unsightly and extremely vulgar. That very night, I sneaked into the cinema with anxiety and sat in front of the screen with bated breath, anticipating the arrival of some scenes that he described as unsightly. Whenever a man and a woman start to get intimate on the screen, I always think that there should be a more erotic scene next. In fact, as with every eighties movie, every time I was looking forward to it, the scene came to a screeching halt. I finally couldn't stand watching this poor movie and left angrily halfway through. I went to denounce this abominable liar early the next morning, and the answer I got was: I knew you would definitely run to watch it. I was deceived by this movie, and I must find someone to back me up.
Speaking of Xian Yuanping, I always think of two details. On my 17th birthday, we were drinking together, and a stone bench fell over and hit my instep. He was carrying me to the hospital on his back. Another scene was when he and his girlfriend encountered emotional entanglements. He dragged me to wander downstairs of his girlfriend's house over and over again in the middle of the night.
Xian Yuanping recently came to Chengdu to start a business and is going through the initial pain of starting a business. I wish him all the best.
Three, Yan Chang
Yan Chang is also a member of the Seven Wolves organization. The reason why I wrote a separate chapter for him is because I feel that I am close to him to some extent. Similar, if there's any difference between us, it's that I think he's always been better than me.
I was classmates with Yan Chang from kindergarten to high school, but we were only classmates for a short time in our freshman year of high school. When I was in elementary school and I was frequently asked by my parents because I couldn't hand in my homework on time, Yan Chang made his debut as a rising star. With the three stripes on her shoulders, she presided over the flag-raising ceremony together with the most beautiful girls in the grade, and was in the most eye-catching position in various chorus and poetry recitation programs. When I was in junior high school, my class teacher was my brother's classmate. I relied on this nepotism to get a chance to show my face and speak as a representative at the new league members' joining ceremony. Many years later, when Yan Chang was talking to me about this incident, he said that when he saw me walking on stage, he couldn't help but wonder, who is this SB? Normally, such a cool role should be played by him.
Yan Chang failed to become a good student in the traditional sense. Since high school, he has been smoking, drinking, stealing, molesting well-behaved women, and has committed numerous violations of school rules. There is a charming frankness, frankness and abandonment in his nature. We often drink together, get drunk for no reason, and then brag shamelessly about a beautiful girl who is obsessed with us. When we were drunk, we fell asleep on the grass of the stadium, on the benches in the waiting room or on the desks in the classroom.
Yan Chang is the only person with whom I have maintained close correspondence during college and even after working. His writing is just like himself, humorous, witty and sharp.
During the summer vacation of my junior year, I experienced my first lovelorn experience. My mood is very low. I took the train from Wuhan to Beijing, and he stayed with me for a week. Every day during the day, he would take me around Beijing. At night, he would buy a few bottles of beer and sit in the woods in front of the dormitory, listening to me tirelessly talk about the pain of broken love.
Many years later, when I went to Beijing on a business trip, Yan Chang invited me to dinner, which happened to be near Beijing Normal University. After dinner, we walked around the campus together and saw the original dormitory and grove again. Ten years passed in a blink of an eye. I began to feel less and less hurt, and had less and less need to talk, but when I think of that summer ten years ago, brother, I still thank you for listening.
IV. Postscript
Hello, my friends, when I think of you again in the dark, when I pick up those old fragments, my heart is full of memories for a long time. I've never been touched before. No matter where you are and what your situation is, I still and will always remember the laughter and tears we had together.