Chapter 15 Moment of Time/Chen Chen

I started to realize that I was different from others when I was 5 years old, on November 2, 1990 to be precise. It was a windy Friday, and the weather was cloudy. When I got up in the morning, my mother asked me to wear more clothes, because the temperature was going to cool down today.As soon as I entered the kindergarten that morning, I was caught by our teacher Sun because I was fighting with a fat guy named Gao Heng.Teacher Sun is a very gentle female teacher. She was 23 years old at the time and had just graduated from university. She was wearing a warm yellow sweater and a beautiful ponytail that day.

She took Gao Heng and me to a corner and asked why we were fighting. Gao Heng shook his head blankly and said, "I don't know. He beat me as soon as he came in today and said he wanted to settle accounts with me." So she turned to ask me what account I wanted to settle with him, and I told her righteously: "He kicked my ass when I came home from school three days ago in the afternoon, and he said he would seek revenge on him three days later, so I will beat him today." Teacher Sun touched my head with a smile, and said that you really hold a grudge, and children should be friendly to each other.

I said: "He is not friendly with me. From the time he met me to today, he has kicked my ass 7 times, pulled my ear 5 times, and pinched my face 8 times." At that time I only learned arithmetic up to 10, so I can only describe 16 in this way. After hearing what I said, Teacher Sun, who was smiling at first, immediately froze. She sent Gao Heng away, and then took me to the principal's office to call my mother. Later, there was no suspense in the development of things. They were surprised to find that I was an abnormal child. I could clearly remember every detail of everything from my own notes, down to every meal every day. What is it, what program is on TV, what news, whether the weather is good or bad, windy or rainy, even who and where said something to me, every picture is vivid in my memory, as long as I recall, they It's as clear as a movie.And there is no blank space except for bedtime.

And it was only at that moment that I realized that human beings are animals that can "forget". What you have done, what you have done, the songs you have heard, and the words you have read can all be ruthlessly forgotten after a period of time, and the rate and efficiency of forgetting are so high, just like the juicer after the watermelon passes through. Like the pitiful residues left behind by people, I even worry that they will forget who they are one day. But I myself can't experience this feeling of "forgetting" at all, as if the living people can never understand the sense of nothingness of "death", I can only sit there helplessly, watching my family because I will forget the day before. The surprised and terrified eyes after reciting word for word in the evening news broadcast, and then talked sadly about what kind of disease it is, and whether it will affect the development of the brain and other topics.

However, the adult world is utilitarian after all. When I memorized the "Disciple Regulations" in front of my neighbors like beans, I saw the proud eyes of my parents, even though it only took me less than an hour. .And when they make a phone call, they only need to call "Seventh Uncle" or "Eighth Aunt", and I can report the number completely, which is much more convenient and quicker than checking the phone book.Even my grandma would ask me "where did I put my sewing needles", "what did I have for lunch yesterday", "whose house did I say I was going to drop by in the morning", and they haven't since Discussed the structure of my brain and only praised me as a smart kid.

But I'm not really a bright kid, it's just that my mind is as clear and efficient as a photocopier and as cold and precise as a computer. Many years later, when I was admitted to a well-known university in the country with the first place in the province, I found out that my disease was called "hypermemory". The memory of patients with this disease will be different from ordinary people. They can remember every detail in life and have a photographic memory. This is the reason why I can easily enter a prestigious university. I have basically no What I have studied seriously, as long as it is the books I have read, the lessons I have attended, and the questions I have done, I can play it back in my mind like a movie during the exam, just like cheating.Since my logical thinking ability is not so outstanding, I just simply remember the original topic, so my science has always been bad.But since I signed up for liberal arts, I have never learned two words in my high school life. I have read all the textbooks on history, geography and politics for three years in a week. When discussing the arguments above, my answers are never word for word, down to the exact punctuation.

As far as I know, there are only a few people in the world who suffer from this disease, and it is estimated that there will not be a second one who can get as sick as me. I have been very happy since I was a child, because my parents have never worried about my studies, and I have made many friends because of my special ability. I will tell all kinds of jokes and strange stories to them, You can even tell them what clothes they wore and where they said something on a certain day in a certain year and month.And they would also listen with great interest, staring at me with wide-eyed fascination, as if they were listening to someone else's story.

It was at such a moment that I began to envy them, the kind of things in their eyes.I have never been able to understand their nostalgia for memories. They will always pick up a postcard from many years ago with nostalgia, reminisce about a yellowed old photo together, or even watch a movie they watched a long time ago. It doesn’t make any sense to me, after all, they are so clear in my mind that I can touch them: I can write every word on the postcard silently, and I can know at a glance what time and day it is when what happened in the photo , and every plot and every line of the old movie, I can lie on the bed and close my eyes and show it completely.

It was a painful envy that gradually turned into a kind of jealousy. I felt like a person without memories, just because my mind was full of so-called "memories". I began to become depressed and no longer willing to contact people. In college, I began to skip classes, hide in the dormitory and play games for a day, or read books in the library for an afternoon, or even just sit by the lake in a daze. Think about nothing, as these are the most effective ways to reduce memory besides sleep.As long as I don't create memories, then I won't have any memories, I thought silently, looking at the clouds in the blue sky, watching the leaves fall from the trees to the grass and then to the forest. On the shady path, watching the hurried footsteps of young people, and the youth that goes by with time.

Until one day, I met a girl named Ru Bing. It was September 14, 2006, and she walked up to me in a floral dress and asked me if I was the one who knew everything. I smiled and said to her, "I don't know everything, I just remember everything." Then she chatted with me, from astronomy to geography, I found that she actually knew as much as I did, and I just remembered what happened, but she could have her own views on what happened. "Although you remember everything, what's the use of 'remembering' itself? What happened happened after all, and you can't change anything. If you can't give them their own meaning, just play them like a projector. If you look at those things, they will eventually become false, won't they?"

I looked into her eyes and fell into a long time of contemplation. It was a long, long time. Five birds flew by in the sky. A couple walked from one end of the lake to the other. Not far away, they drove by. A black car. "What's your name?" I asked her. "As ice." "Does it mean like ice?" "If you have to understand it that way." She chuckled, and her smile was beautiful, just like the iris flower that she leaned over and saw in the corner when she was passing by the bottom of her house when she was seven years old. "Well, it's as cold as my brain." "How to say?" "I often feel that it is very ruthless. It always records everything, good or bad, happy or sad, without my consent at all, nor does it give me any right to choose." "But do you know that forgetting has never been our choice? Sometimes we just forget the things that were once unforgettable inadvertently, without leaving a trace, and there is no room for regret. After all, how could you go Regret something you've forgotten." When she said this, there were complex emotions in her eyes, which made people want to read more stories from it. "May I know your phone number?" I asked her weakly. "Okay, can I send it to you?" "No, it's enough for you to say it once, and you will never forget it in your life." She gave me a shy look, but I didn't tell her that it wasn't some hypocrisy, but a real truth. In the next 10 days, I met Rubing 7 times, had 5 meals together, and visited the library once. In the library that evening, she suddenly asked me, if I was given enough time, would I be able to put all the books in the library into my mind? I smiled and said: "Give a few monkeys a few printers, and they can print the complete works of Shakespeare in an infinite time." "Don't be silly, I'm just curious." "It can be, but I don't seem to have the need to do this, and it will take a long time. Even if you take all the books in the library to a printing shop to print it, it will take a long time, not to mention I have to read it word by word before I can remember it, and I don’t read to memorize it, I still rely on the text itself.” "So you are actually a machine with feelings, not as cold as you describe." She laughed. "Well, I don't know. Sometimes I feel that I am really slow in emotion. Maybe the speed of thinking is too fast, and I become clumsy emotionally. God is fair. After all, I am not a person who is good at expressing myself. people." "Have you ever liked a girl?" "No." "there has never been?" "Never, my memory is so good, I think if I like someone, maybe I will never forget it." "So you're just scared." "Afraid? Afraid of what?" "Just like some people will never keep pets, the lives of most pets are bound to be shorter than their owners. This is doomed to a life-and-death parting in the future. Some people feel that since they can't bear this established sadness, they simply choose to live forever. No pets." "This sounds reasonable, but it seems a bit strange to use pets as a metaphor for falling in love." I smiled and shook my head. After coming out of the library that night, we sat on the playground all night. It was still hot in September in the south, but the night breeze could always dissipate the boredom and anxiety accumulated during the day. "I have another question. Have you ever thought about what you want to do in the future? I think you have the potential to become a painter or musician. As long as you have seen paintings or music scores, you can immediately remember them in your mind, right? ?” Ru Bing suddenly turned her head and asked me. "There is something called 'talent'. Take painting as an example. Even if some people look at the painting and copy it, they still draw very badly. Playing the piano requires emotion and skill. Just remember that there are What's the use." "So it seems that it is really useless. I am really worried about your future." She smiled mischievously at me. Her smile was beautiful under the moonlight. I clearly remember that the air at that time was filled with The smell of her shampoo, the strange smell of plastic on the playground, and the unique smell of summer night. I gently closed my eyes, listening to the sound of insects in my ears, and the sound of ice-like breathing. At this time, she secretly put her hand on mine. At that time, the sound of my heartbeat still echoes today. Me and Ru Bing were only together for 1 year, 7 months and 18 days. It was an unforgettable time, although I don’t seem to be qualified to say that, after all, all the days are so equal in my mind. But whenever I close my eyes and think back to those days, I really feel that they are so special. For the first time, I find that I start to feel a little warmth and touch from a certain memory. Every time she holds my hand, she will ask me this is the first time we have held hands. I can always tell her the number again and again, from ten to one hundred to one thousand, and I will also tell her the number in her ear. I told her how many times she said she loved me, each time on which day, at which time, at which place, and what kind of clothes she was wearing.We never need any promises between us, and she never asks me to make promises to her, because she knows that I will remember them all, and I will never forget them in my life. There will also be conflicts between us, such as when I go over her old accounts, saying when she has made trouble unreasonably, or deny that she turned over my old accounts, and refute her what I should actually be like one day. She was surprisingly angry, even though she knew I didn't mean to remember her badly.But no matter how angry she is, she will always forgive me afterwards, and she will never quarrel with me. After all, she knows that for me, no matter how good or bad things are, they will be deeply etched in my mind. She doesn't want to wait for decades I'll bring it up later. But unfortunately, she still couldn't wait for that day decades later.She chose to leave me in the end because she couldn't accept a person like me, and I would put too much pressure on her. After all, she must be careful with me and not make mistakes, otherwise such a crippled woman will stay with me forever In the memory, can not be erased. After Ru Bing left, I returned to my own life, dazed every day, reading books, playing games, sleeping, shutting myself in my own world, isolated from the world.Friends came to persuade me, tried to give me some comfort, but they all left helplessly in the end, after all, they also know that the saying "time heals everything" does not work for me, I am not a person who will heal automatically Man, my wound will keep bleeding until the day it dries up, just because I don't have an ability called "forgetting". I often think that maybe she is much luckier than me, because she is at least like everyone else, being constantly washed away in the torrent of time, and one day she will forget everything about me, and I But I can only stand on the shore, in a port where all emotions are solidified into a levee, until the end of life. But in fact, I am stronger than they imagined. As long as I keep doing things and don't leave myself time and space to remember, I will naturally not feel sad.So I began to try to write articles, adapting my twenty years of memory into novels, with such clear memories, plus I have read so many books, this is not a difficult process.And I found that the speed of writing is much slower than the speed of my own thinking, so as long as my pen is moving, my thinking will slow down along with it, it makes me no longer immersed in those cold memories, let me I have a new understanding and thinking about my life. So I thought of the words Ru Bing said to me for no reason: "What happened happened after all. Since you can't change it, why don't you give it your own meaning." I closed my finished manuscript, closed my eyes and imagined the temperature of her lips when she kissed me for the first time, and the corners of my mouth started to rise slightly. I never thought that this "ice-like" girl made my 20 years of cold memories suddenly warm. I'm thirty-one years old, I'm a writer, my books are selling well, but no one remembers me as a hyperamnesiac. The day before yesterday, I had dinner with the editor of the publishing house. He asked me how my new book was going, and asked me to tell you about the general plot. I was stunned for a long time and couldn't speak. "By the way, you actually memorized what you wrote yourself. You really have time." His expression was very similar to that of Teacher Sun in the kindergarten twenty-two years ago. "Time is something that you can keep for use, and you can't save it for later use, can you?" I laughed. "Isn't it a waste of time to memorize things? I have had a very poor memory since I was a child. The text I memorized the night before was forgotten by the teacher the next day. That kind of memory bread is so good, if you want to remember something, you will remember it immediately after eating it, and you will never forget it." He shook his head and said, as if intoxicated in his own fantasy. "What if there is something you want to forget?" "It seems that you don't need to forget it deliberately. After all, there is nothing that can never be forgotten. At that time, even if it seemed to be a great thing, one day you will not remember anything, right? People's memory is the most important thing in this world. The most unreliable thing." I drank the coffee in my cup and shook my head with a smile. "By the way, I'm doing a reader survey these days, and I want to ask you this question and see how you answer it," he said. "what is the problem?" "If there was an opportunity for you to ask the God of Death when he died, would you ask him?" "Of course I asked, why didn't I ask." I replied very simply. "Then what are you going to do after you know?" He seemed surprised. "I'll be in bed 1 year, 7 months and 18 days early." "and then?" "Recall my whole life." Chen Chen, post-90s author.Weibo ID: Chen Chen CC.It has been published in "One" App.