This identity as a painter has also made me often fall into the situation of dishonesty, and I have been impressed at least twice. At a dinner party, Yingxiu introduced me as a painter to everyone in the audience in that habitual tone, and when I saw the people at the table casting reverent glances at me, I was already accustomed to them, and I didn't even have the slightest shyness or embarrassment, and it felt like I had grown from a child to an adult. I smiled and nodded to the people present, making me seem approachable and very polite. There was a girl on the table, she was brought by Yingxiu's friend. She wore short hair that covered her ears and wore a white T-shirt, and she didn't say a word from the moment she sat there, except to say a word to the boy who brought her, and then continued to sit there as if she was thinking about something.

When I was introduced as a painter, she was immediately freed from her original state, like a feline that saw its prey, full of energy, staring at me with excitement in her eyes, as if ready to make a decisive swoop.

"When are you free?" she asked, "help me draw a portrait." ”

This is the first time I've asked for a portrait of her since I became a painter. I've thought about this before, and there will always be people who want to ask for this. It is always difficult to say no to such a request, but there is a clever answer that is as simple as saying yes.

"Yes, I'll draw it for you when I'm free. I replied very simply, so that everyone in the room could tell that I had indeed agreed to her. But I know very well that this kind of promise will hardly lead to anything, and I have heard too many such requests when I was learning to draw and going to school, and when others ask for it, I always say yes to them. "Free" is an ethereal word, this word provides a psychological implication of an indefinite postponement in the future, when the time of this request has passed, everyone will have "free" time, but this "free" time will never think of having made an appointment with someone about something.

I said yes as before, and I didn't take it to heart again, knowing that it would be forgotten by her and I as the dinner was over. Five days later, I received a call from her asking when I would be free to paint her portrait. I didn't think of anything at first, but when she told me about the dinner that day, I remembered that she had promised a girl to paint her a portrait. I told her that I had been busy in the past two days, and that I had been busy in those two days, and I was busy putting crabs on bamboo sticks in a restaurant, and I went back at night with the smell of my body, and I took a shower and fell asleep, and I dreamed that crabs crawled over me at night.

She asked me in a somewhat disappointed tone when I was free, a question I had heard when I was in school, and replied with ease: "I don't know yet, but it's been a busy two days anyway." ”

The second time she called, I was still wearing crabs and still replying to her in the same language. When she called the third time to ask, I repeated the first two responses. It wasn't until her fourth call that I realized the girl wasn't that easy to get through. I've never met someone who asks four times in a row, and it's so unfriendly to answer in the same language four times in a row, and I regret not saying no to her directly, but I did never directly refuse someone, and that would embarrass others and embarrass myself. I was very concerned with what the world thought of me, and dishonesty was an unbearable assessment, so I thought my kind of answer was a way to get the best of both worlds. I also respect people and don't want my words to hurt others, and when I reply to the girl with the same reason, I feel sorry for myself, and my tone is soft, always with deep apologies, which I didn't expect to make things even more difficult to deal with.

When I studied painting as a major, I never took painting as a hobby anymore, and I was even a little bored, but it was never as "hated to death" as the class leader said. A perfect painting takes too long, and it is not done in a few hasty strokes, as the layman thinks, which is why I am reluctant to paint for others.

I obviously can't get away with this girl, and I'm sure if I don't paint her, she'll keep calling me. Eventually, I agreed to use her evening time after work to paint for her. I didn't have any painting supplies in that city, and a set of oil painting supplies would cost too much, so I asked her if she could sketch, and she said she wanted one. I feel a lot more relaxed, it would be much easier if I just sketched.

We made an appointment on a Tuesday night, when I got off the morning shift as a security guard, and on the way back to where I lived, I bought a few pencils, a few pieces of wood pulp paper for sketching, erasers, and an easel and a sketchpad from a stationery store, and the whole thing cost me two hundred and thirty-seven dollars, which was my salary for more than two days as a security guard, just to paint a portrait of a woman I had nothing to do with me. I was frugal at that time, and I repaid the money that Yingxiu lent me that time, and there was not much surplus, and money was what I valued the most during that time. Buying that set of painting supplies made me feel distressed for days.

When I went downstairs with my things, she was already waiting there, and I told her where I was staying on the phone. She looked incredulous when she saw the tattered exterior of the building, and when she entered the Yingxiu house, the look of disbelief was even more serious - she, like me, must not have expected such a big gap between inside and outside the house. I exchanged a few words with her, asked her some questions, and then asked her to sit on the sofa where I usually sleep, I stretched out the drawing board, put the easel on the shelf, nailed the wood pulp paper to the drawing board, and began to outline the general proportions and outlines.

The painting lasted less than two hours, and I didn't put on too complicated tones. She looked as if she had captured the prey she had seen at the dinner that day, and she marveled more than once that it was so similar, until I had washed my lead-stained hands and put them away, ready for her to take away. Her gratitude was genuine, and she wanted to invite me to dinner as a token of her gratitude. This time, I won't have the embarrassment of being embarrassed to refuse directly, and I told her that she doesn't have to be so polite, and there is not much difficulty in drawing.

Another time it was Yingxiu's direct boss, and we casually agreed to help him draw while diving. I had a phobia of the deep sea, so I didn't dive with them, and I felt the warm breeze wafting from the sea on the deck chair on the shore, and the warm breeze brought a hint of the salty smell of the sea. After they came ashore, in the midst of casual conversation, I promised him in almost inertial language: "I will draw you when I have time". He wanted a picture of a chirping willow tree in spring, and he specified that he needed an oil painting or watercolor. The next day, I forgot about it, and in the evening, Yingxiu brought me a message from his boss and asked me if I had a specific time to paint. I knew that I had fallen into the same predicament I had promised to paint that girl last time, and that feeling of regret that I hadn't rejected him directly had reappeared, and it was even more severe than last time. Although he was Yingxiu's direct leader this time, I still asked him to tell his leader that I was not available for the past two days. It wasn't until Yingxiu asked for the fourth time that I knew that his leader was not so easy to dismiss. I think it was Yingxiu who told his leader that I didn't even have the tools to paint, and his leader directly bought a set of painting tools for oil painting, and I no longer had any reason and extra face to refuse him.

That Zhizhi drew for four days and nearly nine hours, and changed a few places in the middle according to the advice of his leader. The day after the painting was handed over to his leader, Yingxiu brought me 1,000 yuan: "This is the reward that my leader gave you." "This is the second time I've made money by painting, the first time is from Mr. Ou.

These two incidents didn't make me change the same answer when someone asked me to paint, I always said, "I'll paint you when I have time." "I know that those two events were just accidental, and no one is as persistent as they are. Perhaps, after a few days, they also forgot that there was once a down-and-out painter who promised to paint a picture for themselves.

I looked for odd jobs in that labor market to make ends meet until the end of the year, when I had been graduating for nearly half a year, and there was no winter in the city where Yingxiu and I lived. On the phone, I heard from my mother that the snow in my hometown had been falling for more than ten days, crushing tree branches, blocking roads, and killing sparrows, and even the dead branches seemed to be frozen to death again. She had to clear the snow in the yard and in front of my house five times a day, and she often forgot that there was no winter in my city, and when she was clearing the snow or being attacked by the cold, she would always wonder if I was not wearing enough warm clothes, until I told her on the phone again that there was no winter in my city, and she suddenly said from the other side of the phone: "Look at my memory." ”

When the Chinese New Year was approaching, I took out 2,000 yuan out of the 3,500 yuan I had saved and sent it to my family, but the money was returned to my card by my mother after the Chinese New Year. One night before the Chinese New Year, I had just come back from the streets, and on those days, I was hanging lanterns on the street lamps and trees in the city streets. My mother told me on the phone what kind of New Year's goods she had prepared, that one of my aunts and grandmothers had died on the twentieth day of the lunar month, and that there was a homeless man in the market who was beaten for stealing a bun. I also told her about my recent situation, at first, I told her the truth about my real situation in the city, and finally I became smarter, telling her that I had found a stable job as a hand painter in an advertising agency, and when my mother wanted to see what I was doing, I asked Yingxiu to go to their company and take a picture of the picture I had drawn for his boss, which hung in their boss's office. I'll forward it to my mother again.

"Well, that's right. The mother said, "You painted it, and no one else can imitate it." ”

It was the first time in my life that I was not at home for the Chinese New Year, for no other reason than because my home was so close to where I went to school, and I had to pass through the city where my school was located to get home.