Chapter 9 Nine

Lao Luo used his domineering education methods to cultivate his son's strength and ability to endure hardships and stand hard work for a long time, but painting changed Luo Xiaomao's life.If Luo Xiaomao hadn't been restricted by his father at that time, Luo Xiaomao's naturally active personality would never have become obsessed with painting. Undoubtedly, his life today would have to be rewritten.Maybe it was a very dark oil painting, just like Wang Dali, coming and going into the cell.Then he will not be the Luo Bin I wrote in the next novella "Create Yourself" today.That's a task for another novel.

In 1972, Luo Xiaomao changed his name when he entered junior high school, and Luo Xiaomao became "Luo Bin". This is a dividing line in his life.His junior high school, high school, educated youth and college classmates, as well as later colleagues and friends only knew him as "Luo Bin", but his elementary school classmates and teachers, as well as the adults and children of H Normal School, only called him "Luo Xiaomao".Luo Xiaomao's name change was purely caused by painting.During the long summer vacation before entering junior high school, Luo Xiaomao suddenly became interested in painting.His father expressly stipulated that he could not go out.Although he cooks three meals a day, it only takes two or three hours.The rest of the time surrounded him like a clearly visible ammonia gas, making him extremely bored.So he started sitting at his desk drawing pistols, rifles, planes, cannons, and tanks with pens to pass the time of ineffectiveness that besieged him.One day, my sister left a new handkerchief on the table. It was a brand new handkerchief with the pattern of "Chang'e Flying to the Moon" printed on it.It was this handkerchief that "injected" new blood into him.He started to draw it lying on the table, and first drew it on the picture book. After he finished the drawing, he felt very good-looking, so he wanted to have a large picture and paste it on the wall. "I want to buy a piece of drawing paper and a box of watercolors." He said to his mother, "I have no taste in the house." His father said aside: "If you want to paint, then we support it."

The next day his mother bought him a piece of drawing paper and a box of watercolors, and he hurriedly cut out a long strip and spread it on the square table, holding a pencil and meticulously copying "Chang'e Flying to the Moon".He painted it for two days, and when it was finished, he hung it on the bed and admired it endlessly.Father came home covered in mud from the damp bomb shelter.He even forgot to take off the rattan helmet and stood behind his son to watch it together.There was something kind in his father's thick square face.The son looks at his own painting purely for self-entertainment.The father saw his son's future from this painting. "Your calligraphy still needs to be practiced." My father glanced at the crooked calligraphy of "Chang'e Flying to the Moon" and said.Luo Xiaomao said: "I can practice."

"The name Luo Xiaomao needs to be changed," the father thought while staring at his son's name at the signature place, "If you become famous in your paintings in the future, this name won't look like a painter's name." The father thought foresight The appearance said again; "It's good that the name looks formal." That night, for the first time in his life, he asked his son's opinion, "Xiao Mao, come here." Lao Luo sat at the table, holding a piece of paper with several names written on it, and asked his son to choose, "Which name do you think is good?"His father glanced at him, "Then let's take Wen Wubin." When Luo Xiaomao entered middle school that year, he filled in the name "Luo Bin" in the registration book.

In 1972, there were some welcome changes in Luo Xiaomao's family.First, the second elder brother (mother's good son) returned to the city due to illness. In the winter of 1971, when the second brother was building a reservoir in the countryside of Changde, he accidentally "blew up" his waist because he picked up 6 dustpans of soil with a pole (showing ruthlessness).The second brother lay in Changde County People's Hospital for a month. At the beginning of 1972, the second brother returned to Changsha with the certificate issued by the hospital that he could no longer engage in heavy manual labor and the file and household registration returned to him by the commune.The second brother was born very handsome, he played a bamboo flute whirring, and always had such a bright and warm smile on his face that many young girls often came to Luo's house to look for him.

The second elder brother has a high personality, and looks down on a few girls who come to him on their own initiative, even though there are many girls who can be called decent in figure and image.In order to scare these girls away, the second brother took out three pairs of belts that his mother bought for him for exhibition. "This is the widest pair for snowy weather, this is the medium size for the north wind, and this is the small one for the rain." The second brother explained that I am a patient who needs to wear three pairs of belts in a year.But this does not scare these girls away at all, but provides them with a chance to express their love.Because the second brother didn't want to hear it, he hummed "Ouch, Ouch" and pretended to be in excruciating pain.Brother Luo Xiaomao's distress is to get rid of the pursuit of several girls.When the second brother returned to the city, he pretended to actively participate in the studies organized on the street every day.Learn "hair style" with mother-in-law and grandma.

The second change in Luo Xiaomao’s family is that her elder sister Luo Lili recruited workers to Changsha Municipal Engineering Company to repair roads this fall. Although this is not a good job, it has an "iron job" after all, so there is no need to lose work for her And anxious. The third change in the family in 1972 was reflected in Luo Xiaomao's father. In 1972, the military propaganda team withdrew, and the digging of air-raid shelters stopped.My father was arranged to work in a school-run factory, and he no longer had to work as a "pangolin".At that time, there was nothing to do in the school-run factory, and a dozen people worked on the foreign construction site for a few hours, and everything was fine, unlike digging mud all day long in a damp air-raid shelter.During that time, Luo Xiaomao's father was as obsessed with tailoring as his son was with painting.The Butterfly brand sewing machine that my family bought for my sister was like buying it for my father.At first he just made a few pairs of "rice bag" shorts for himself and his mother, then he cut a pair of trousers for himself by referring to a tailoring book, and he actually made it. Then he started doing it with great fanfare and bought several tailoring books Books, painting powder, tape measure, when I came home from work, I hurriedly put on reading glasses, put a stack of cloth on the clean door panel and meditated, never tired of it... When Luo Xiaomao was in junior high school, his father still controlled him very tightly. No. 17 Middle School is only 5 minutes away from Luo Xiaomao's house. Walk two streets from Luo's house, turn up a slope, and arrive at the two wooden gates of No. 17 Middle School.Lao Luo personally brought his son to report there, and encouraged him along the way.When Lao Luo raised his foot and stepped into the school gate of No. 17 Middle School, he looked down at his watch. It took him 5 minutes to walk from home to the school gate. When he walked from the school gate to the classroom where his son was studying, his father looked at the watch again: 1 minute 20 seconds .Luo Xiaomao's class teacher is a male teacher wearing glasses, surnamed Gao, standing around him are more than a dozen male and female students who have already registered.They all looked at the male classmate who asked his father to bring him to report with eyes like cicadas.They didn't understand the purpose of Luo Xiaomao's father "bringing" his son here. In fact, Luo Xiaomao himself didn't understand his father's purpose.When the father and Yu two returned home, finished frying vegetables in front of the peanut shell stove like a war, and sat down to eat at the table, the son knew the purpose of his father accompanying him to report. "It only takes 5 minutes to get from home to the school gate, and 1 minute and 20 seconds to the classroom where you report." The father confessed, looking at his son, "I will give you 5 minutes to relieve yourself, that should be enough.

10 minutes to go 10 minutes back, more than enough.I copied a schedule of work and rest, school was over at 12:00 noon, and school was over at 4:30 pm.You have to be home by 12:10 or 4:40.Do you hear me? The son lowered his head desolately, "I heard that." "Come back after the time I stipulated," Lao Luo stared at his son fiercely, "I will beat you to death." Lao Luo said again: "I won't give you any more time to do bad things."You have to understand! "I understand" Luo Xiaomao said in further pain. At that time, going to middle school was not as hard as it is for middle school students now.I couldn't see the dawn of reading in those years.Going to college has become recommended by workers, peasants and soldiers, and graduates from elementary school can also go to college as long as they have "red roots and good seedlings".Therefore, both the teacher teaching and the students reading have shown irresponsibility.When Luo Bin was in junior high school for two years, he rarely did homework, and most of his classmates rarely paid attention to the homework assigned by the teacher.Class representatives, especially English class representatives, are useless. There are 50 students in the class, but there are only ten notebooks every day, and even a few notebooks are handed over to the English teacher for correction.The class teacher Mr. Gao teaches politics, and it is rare to assign homework once a month.The math teacher made some mistakes in style, so he was a bit self-defeating on the podium, and he "stinked" himself into a mess.The physics teacher also assigns homework, but never accepts the notebook to read.The physics teacher found a way for himself and said: "Every student must learn to think independently, don't rely on the teacher." At first, the Chinese teacher held a sense of responsibility to teach and educate people, and wanted to teach something famous. In the past, she often explained the mistakes that should not have occurred in the homework on the podium, and reprimanded this one and criticized that one by name. This naturally aroused many students to dislike her, and no one handed in her homework to her. "Why didn't you hand in your homework?" "I forgot to bring it." "What about you?" "I didn't bring it."

"Then what's the reason for you?" "The homework book was lost by someone else." "You don't know how to buy one?" "My father said forget it," the classmate said, "My father said that anyway, reading and not reading They are all going to the countryside." The Chinese teacher was so angry that his eyes were as big as chestnuts... Although Luo Bin's father kept telling Luo Bin to concentrate on studying, in fact, he was also affected by the theory that reading is useless. Seeing that his son did not do homework at all, I took a pencil to draw this picture and that all day long, and I didn't object.In those days, there was a column in the monthly recruitment form that made ordinary people think hard, and that was to fill in "what are their specialties". Naturally, those with specialties had an advantage over those without specialties, and they were also valued by the factory leaders after entering the factory.There was once such a joke in Changsha: When a factory was recruiting workers, a young woman who filled out the form wrote in the column "What are her specialties" that she is "able to sing and dance, also to practice medicine, and to know erhu and draw".Half of Changsha's population of 1.4 million knows what this joke is about.This joke was dedicated to the whole family by Luo Bin's second brother. Since expertise is so important to a person, it is only natural for his father to support his son's painting.

Luo Bin's sister's "Chang'e Flying to the Moon" small handkerchief started the decoration career that Luo Bin still has a job to this day.Luo Bin painted four pieces of "Chang'e Flying to the Moon", and a classmate of his sister was going to the first one.The second one was just hung on the wall and was cheated by another classmate of my sister. The third one was taken away by my mother's colleague, a teacher whose husband worked in the army.The fourth painting "Chang'e Flying to the Moon" was taken by the second brother as soon as it was finished.At that time, the Lu family and his wife who lived in front of his house died of rectal cancer and esophageal cancer one after another. The two houses where the Lu family lived were divided into two, and one of them was allocated to the Luo family.Luo Bin's second brother regarded that house as his "palace".He dug the ground half a foot, brought in lime, slag and yellow mud, compacted it tightly, and paved it into a compound soil that was extremely dry even in spring.Then the second brother repainted the walls and ceiling, and painted the doors and windows brightly."Chang'e Flying to the Moon" painted by Luo Bin was naturally selected into his "Palace".The second brother is not far from being a handsome man, and of course my mother likes the second brother very much.My mother bought my second brother a Fenghuang 28 bicycle that was very fashionable at the time, a Shanghai brand watch for my second brother, a red light brand radio with pure sound for my second brother, and a sharp-sounding radio for my second brother. copper flute.But my mother was reluctant to spend money on Luo Bin. Whether Luo Bin bought pencils or watercolors, he had to fight with his mother for a long time. "Your performance," the mother said seeing the son not coming, "what the hell are you painting?" "I want to paint, give me the money." The son said.The mother refused to give money, "As long as you don't become a prisoner and reform criminal, you will accumulate virtue." The arbiter among mother and son is naturally the father, "Luo Xiaomao still needs to support painting, Lao Huang." The mother said reluctantly: "He wants money. The attitude is good or bad, as if the mother owed her eight lifetimes." The father turned his face and looked at the son, "Your attitude towards mother is better." "My attitude is good," Luo Bin argued, "I want to buy watercolors So, Luo Bin's wall was gradually filled with red, green and green paintings: "Chang'e Flying to the Moon", "Fairies Spreading Flowers", "Three Friends of the Winter", and cats, tigers, galloping horses and so on.His future began to "show his face" on his bed.