Writing this title, I was puzzled for a while, and there were no children in my memory who I knew before school and played well. I suddenly remembered a quote from García Marcos's autobiographical novel, "To Live to Tell": "We are not what we experience as we are, but how we remember them."

Then I remembered an experience I had when I lived in an old house, when I was probably just over five or six years old. I didn't go to school, and I often followed my two older sisters who needed to work when they came home from school, and my only desire every day was to be able to go outside and play.

At that time, my family still had some rice fields, in the ravine west of our house. In my childhood, rice was a very particular plant, and I have seen the whole process of growing seedlings, transplanting, releasing water, and harvesting, as well as the process of turning it into white rice grains.

Because when I was a child, I liked to play in the ravine at the west end of my home, and when my father was doing farm work, he would often take my younger brother with him. Then I can't hold my voice and I want to go, so I'll take it with me.

He was holding his brother, and I was following his ass, and he would look back from time to time. We walked to the foot of the hillside and crossed a single-plank bridge made of square telephone poles, which was the source of my endless adventure.

Lately I've been thinking about the bridge and the first time I crossed it, I was nervous, excited and excited.

"There are locusts in the river that will burrow into the body along the skin of a person's legs." My dad walked on the riverbank and started warning me.

I didn't dare to go into the water, but I couldn't help but stuff my stinky feet in sandals into the water when the river was crystal clear, stirring up a little splash.

Follow the creek and look for strawberries on the grass by the riverbank. "I don't know which kind farmer uncle planted strawberries on the riverbank." When I picked strawberries, I couldn't help but ask my dad such a stupid bubbling question.

Or, when you see the clear and sweet bubbling spring water, you can't help but hold it in your hand and feed it to your mouth. When I saw small tadpoles, small shrimps, small fish, dragonflies and water, I caught them with my hands, and made nets to catch them, not for fun, nor to feed them, but to catch them home and give them to my neighbor's cat to eat.

My dad was very particular about growing rice, and I often asked him why the rice fields were watered twice a day. He would say, "When the sun rises, it floods the rice fields, and the river water overflows the root system of the rice, which can promote the photosynthesis of the rice and precipitate the matter." At dusk, water should be released to the rice field, and the turbid water in the rice field should be drained, so that its roots can breathe and remove carbon dioxide ......"

Dad is a person who has read books, and people who have read books are different. I also asked my mother the same question, and my mother replied, "That's how the older generation grows, what do you care so much about!" You go back and study hard, and you'll know. ”

When I was a child, I used to hear this and be speechless. As I grew up, I slowly learned that my mom liked to hide her ignorance by raising the decibels of her voice. She has suffered from not studying well, so she will work hard to make all four of us study hard.

The fun did not last long, and a child in the village was said to have drowned in the big river in Donggou. Rumor has it that on the day of the July Festival, a five-year-old girl went out to play with a boy two years younger than her, who had taken away from her relatives. The adults did not pay attention to each other's greetings at home, and the little girl took the little boy to play by the Xigou River, and the little boy fell into the river. The little girl was so frightened that she ran home and hid, when the adults noticed...... In the end, only the body of the little boy was fished out.

The east and west ends of our village are across the river from other villages, the south is the boundless Shenheyuan, and there is a road out of the village in the north, crossing the river is an important transportation route between the villages, and my home is at the intersection of the village.

In the evening, a group of aunts, aunts, sisters, uncles and uncles who did not do anything were full, squatted on the side of the road and began to gossip, it seemed that any news would pass through this place, this incident touched the nerves of all the adults in the village for a while, and the adults began to intimidate the children, and even did not allow the big children to go out with the children, my brother and I were often circled by my mother in her field of vision, I felt that the air was suddenly filled with the smell of the dead, after a long time, This smell slowly faded out of the sight of adults.

And many of my childhood friends met after school. When I was in kindergarten, I knew a lot of words. I can understand the second sister's second-grade books, but I don't have textbooks, so I take the second sister's first-grade language books to school, and I must borrow the books of the same table to study and complete my homework in class, and I am willing to lend it to me at the same table.

If I can't finish my homework at school, I won't be able to finish my homework even if I go home. So for a long time, in addition to the clothes I wore were worn by my eldest sister and my second sister, the second sister couldn't wear them, and my mother made me wear them when I was younger, and even the textbooks were left to me by my mother who told my sister not to write and draw in books. The rest doesn't need to be described one by one. Wu Yang and Xiaohong were warm up on the way home from school.

Because I didn't have a textbook, I showed my smart side at that time, I competed with Wu Yang to write homework, to see who wrote fast, and I would only go home after finishing my homework. And Wu Yang will win every time, not on my own intention, because I also want to win her, but I write really slowly.

Besides, because my mother suffered from not studying well, she was particularly concerned about the education of our four siblings. I remember that when I was in the first grade of kindergarten, the brick houses of the school in the village were about to be demolished and rebuilt, and we had to face the situation of not having a classroom to study at the teacher's home, so my mother transferred the four of us to a primary school in a neighboring village. It was also that year that Wu Yang moved away from the next door to my house, and I rarely studied and played with her anymore.

When I was in my first year, I made many new acquaintances. An Huan, Lu Yan, and Yuxuan are my best friends.

Although, I still didn't have a textbook for class, and I would pretend that I never cared, but I needed to finish my homework faster during class so that I could play with my new friends after class.

Yuxuan was my friend on the way to school with at that time. Her family lives in the village, my family lives at the intersection of the village, and I often go to her house to ask her to go to school in the morning when it is dawn, and I go to her house to call her to school after lunch, except when it rains, because I don't have an umbrella.

Yuxuan's family is very wealthy, his father has a formal job, only comes home on holidays and weekends, and has a young and beautiful mother and a brother who is four years younger than her.

So, her life is completely different from mine. But I don't envy her because I study well. As long as there is this one advantage, I don't think it makes any difference.

Until one day, Yuxuan's mother gave me a piece of clothing, and then said: "We Yuxuan don't like to wear this style, I see that you often wear it, it's quite new, don't dislike it."

After seeing that dress, I noticed the style of the dress on my body for the first time, and I almost cried. Sensible, well-behaved and smart, I won't cry easily, I silently accepted Yuxuan's mother's kindness, and said cautiously, "Thank you, Auntie."

But I didn't put it in my bag and didn't wear it, and I didn't tell my parents about it. I still call Yuxuan to school every morning and noon, but I began to hesitate to enter her house.

Yuxuan doesn't like to get up early, I often go to her house after breakfast, she just got up, I have to wait for my aunt to clean up for her, and she will ask for some pocket money before going to school together.

One day, when my aunt saw that I was not wearing the dress she gave me, she asked me with concern, "Do you not like the clothes your aunt gave you, why didn't you see you wearing them?" ”

I replied vaguely, "No." ”

That afternoon, I went to my aunt's house wearing the clothes she had given me and showed her that I was wearing them. At school that day, Yuxuan happily told the female classmates in the class that my clothes were something she didn't like to wear, and her mother gave it to me to wear.

I didn't say anything because I had good grades. That's how adults speak, and that's how children speak. I just went home and stuffed my clothes into my stove and never wore them again. Then every day I still go to Yuxuan's house at noon to go to school with her.

When Lu Yan was young, she was white and good-looking, with a pair of black onyx eyes, a long twisted braid on each side of her little head, and the most important thing is that she can sing and dance, and she likes to ask me to play together after class.

Once, on Children's Day, we had to rehearse a show. The teacher asked Lu Yan to choreograph the dance with us, and after school, many girls in our class went to Lu Yan's house, only me and Yuxuan were from the same village.

It was late that evening, and Lu Yan's sister found that the ten yuan placed on the courtyard windowsill was lost, and just said, "I remember that there are ten yuan on the windowsill?" ”

When it was time to eat, Lu Yan's mother called for dinner, and we went home separately.

The next day, in the morning, the head teacher called me to the flower bed and asked me, "When you practiced dancing at Lu Yan's house, did you ever see ten yuan on the windowsill?" ”

I replied, "No, I haven't seen it." ”

The teacher asked me again, "Did you take it?" ”

I said, "I didn't take it." ”

The teacher asked, "Have you ever seen who took what money might have taken it?" Did Yuxuan take it? ”

I said, "I haven't seen it, and Yuxuan hasn't taken it." ”

The teacher said, "Don't let me find out you're lying, and if you do, I'm not going to be polite." Then let me into the classroom.

That day, on the way home at noon, I didn't tell Yuxuan about the teacher asking me about it, because I didn't take it, and I believe she didn't take it. When we went to school together in the morning, she told me, "My mom gave me breakfast money." ”

I just said enviously, "My mom gets up at six in the morning and makes me breakfast." ”

……

One day after Children's Day, I remember that I was competing with An Huan in the classroom to see who had completed the word copying assignment first, and I lost again. I couldn't help but laugh secretly with An Huan in the quiet classroom. When the head teacher found out, she called me out of the classroom, came over and kicked me and said, "This is self-study talking." ”

Then, she kicked me again and said, "Is this a lie to you?" ”

Tears welled up in my eyes and I asked, "What did I lie?" ”

"Yuxuan handed over ten yuan, and you even said that you didn't know, you walked with her to school and left school all day long, and you even helped her hide it, she killed people, did you send her a knife...... "The teacher said.

Then, my teacher couldn't help but kick me again, saying, "I don't care if you lie or not, know it or not, this kick is for you to remember." ”

"Dry your tears and go back." Finally she said.

That day, after school in the afternoon, I didn't ask Yuxuan. It's just that the two of us didn't say a word along the way.

After that, for a long time, I didn't go to her house to ask her to go to school with me. If I can't wait for her to call me at home, I'll go to school on my own. However, I didn't break off my friendship with her.

It was only later, after the school in our village was repaired, we transferred schools together, and she met new friends, and I met new friends, and she became estranged from me.

Fortunately, after transferring to another school, Wu Yang and I got to know each other again and became friends, and our friendship, to this day, still has not faded the golden color of childhood.