Chapter 2 1. The poor neighbors of the world

When the mobile phone was buzzing and vibrating in the living room, I was flushing the toilet, while enduring the nausea and comforting myself: One more second is one second, one more poke is one, what is poked down is shit, and what is endured is money, last time please The plumber came, and it only took half an hour to get in and out, and he charged me 350 yuan in total. Looking at the poop flowers churning up and down in the water, my stomach also turned upside down, and the phone kept ringing, I finally gave up my efforts-why bother, the word "perseverance" can only be heard from the mouths of successful people. Meaningful, someone like me who just struggles with the toilet will only highlight my bottom line.

The call was from a high school classmate, Lao Zhou, who said that he was going to hold a party for the tenth anniversary of high school graduation and asked if I would like to attend. To be honest, I don't want to participate. I have attended the parties for the fifth and ninth anniversary of my high school graduation respectively. It is said that the time span is quite large, but I found that there is not much difference between each party. First, they sit together and greet each other, and then they start drinking and eating. After drinking to a certain level, they enter the next link: showing off.

"I was recently promoted and my child can talk. This bag looks good. It was given by my husband. You haven't gone to the Maldives yet. If you don't go there, you will be flooded..." And so on, just like giving a speech at the Oscars, everyone is waiting for their own time to speak, the time is tight and the tasks are heavy, when others are talking, others don’t listen carefully, and they are thinking about how to put themselves in the past few years. The earned things are spread out on the table in the most low-key and calm way. After their respective reports, they entered the nostalgia session accompanied by high alcohol, and everyone began to look back on the past in high school: who chased who with whom, who bullied whom with whom, which teacher had a good temper, and which teacher had body odor.

The tear-jerking point was the day of the graduation ceremony, when the principal stood on the flag-raising platform and shouted "disband" in the playground under the summer sun. Generally, when recalling the disbandment stage, the wine bottles were all empty, everyone shed tears, hugged each other, and kept saying: We can't disband, we can't disband. Not far away, the waiter watched us, the last group of guests, cry together, and they looked indifferent as they were in a hurry to get off work. After this paragraph is over, we will really disband. We go back to our respective houses, wash our faces and brush our teeth, and wake up the next day, drinking too much alcohol, and our head hurts like crazy. But in order to have new content to perform at the class reunion next year, we must I have to get up and go to work, those who pretend to be grandsons continue to pretend to be grandsons, those who lose their smiles continue to lose their smiles, recalling last night while squeezing the subway, is the phrase "disbanded" that the principal said really so sensational?I don't feel it now, but at the next party, I will definitely cry.

Having said so much, it does not mean that I hate high school reunions. On the contrary, I am still the most dedicated and focused person in every reunion. I need to rely on them to brush me up in my life that is completely ignored by others. presence. "Hey, are you coming or not? A party?" I looked at the toilet not far away, thinking about the rich toilet in the toilet, and just about to decline, the classmate continued: "You should come to this party. In addition to the few people we stayed in Beijing, there is also an old classmate from Beijing. Our hometown is here, and this time we mainly entertain her."

"Who came from Datong?" My hometown is Datong, Shanxi. I went to high school in Datong. After the college entrance examination, some people in my class went to Beijing, some went to Shanghai, and some stayed in my hometown. "Wu Yali, do you remember her?" I held up my mobile phone for a moment, then said, "I'll definitely come, I'll book the hotel, this meal... I'll treat you." The old classmate was a little surprised: "Ah? Are you so familiar with Wu Yali?" I am actually not familiar with Wu Yali, but I have always remembered her these years.

I remember that she was not far or close to me, that she always thought she was a school girl, and that many people took it as a joke. I remember that she was very dark and had big breasts. At that time, a boy accidentally touched her, and she clutched her chest and yelled about the pain for half a class. But what I remember most clearly is a sentence she wrote in my high school yearbook: Cheng, don't be content with your ordinaryness, I believe you will be happy. When I saw this sentence at the time, I was angry at the first half of the sentence—why am I so ordinary?Although I was only admitted to the second class, it was still a school in Beijing. It's not your turn to say that I am ordinary, so I haven't contacted her since then.

After graduating from university, I started looking for a job, changing jobs, falling in love, being cheated on, I was in pain for a while, trying my best, and preparing to fight again. In the busy time, time passed far faster than when I was in school. Recalling the high school days, The days passed like a DVD card, and each day was so still and long. But I always remember the sentence written by Wu Yali, and I became more and more angry with the second half of the sentence she wrote. "You will be happy." At the job fair, when the HR of the small broken company took my resume and stuffed it without looking at it, I remembered this sentence.

I asked the landlord to repair the electric water heater, and heard the landlord say on the phone: "Oh, you pay the price of renting a private house, do you want to live in a hardcover apartment?" At that time, I remembered this sentence. When I asked the boss to charge overtime pay, the boss looked like I had cut his parents with my hands. When I squeezed the subway in the morning, my underwear was deformed. The day before my colleague got married, I was still hesitating at four o'clock in the morning. Wrapped two 50-yuan counterfeit bills in the red envelope, it would be embarrassing if found out... Later, I still wrapped it in, so why not put it in, I worked with this colleague for half a year, and when we met in the tea room, it took a lot of effort to say hello. I got married and gave me a fine. The invitation said "invite my best friend". He used false feelings and I returned him two counterfeit coins. There is nothing wrong with that.

But at these times, after I have comforted myself, I will always think of this sentence, which Wu Yali wrote down in the memory book with a cheap pink-blue highlighter. "You will be happy." I have always wanted to find Wu Yali and tell her: I knew I would have made a bet with you, betting on an ordinary person, such as me. In this society, there is no famous father, no mother who knows how to come, no Beijing hukou, no returnee experience , I don’t sell my body or my kidneys, I just live by dodging left and right carefully, and I still believe that I am extraordinary. I will bet you a million dollars on whether I will live happily or not.

What is happiness?For me, it's not the nonsense of being true to my heart and going with the situation. Whether I live a happy life or not depends entirely on how my neighbors are doing. The neighbors have a simple meal every day, and I will be happier if I can add a ham sausage to my instant noodles. The neighbors stewed elbows and fried octopus every day, so my bowl of instant noodles was worth swallowing with tears. The neighbors don’t have to live next door. They haunt my life. I’m 28 years old, unmarried, without a boyfriend. I work as a food columnist in a fashion magazine without three insurances and one housing fund. I tell ignorant readers every day, How to live in high society. But the house I live in is rented. I earn one yuan for every word I write, and I have no source of income if I don’t write. I'm the poor neighbor of the world, and I'm the guy who provides happiness to others. So I'm not happy. "Don't be content with your own ordinaryness, I believe you will be happy." When I graduated from high school, I refused to admit that I was ordinary. I hated the first half of this sentence. After work, I hated the second half of this sentence because it was so wrong. And ten years after I graduated, I was so concerned about a graduation gift from my high school classmate Wu Yali who might not have thought of it at all, and even wanted to say to her face to face: This sentence is wrong, a big mistake. The reason why I remember so deeply about holding grudges is probably because: I have believed this sentence.