The joy of childhood
Author: Wei Zhizhi
Happiness is the right of the gifted childhood and needs to be protected by adults; happiness is the food and nutrition for the healthy growth of children, which needs to be guaranteed by society. Depriving children of their happiness in any name is selfish and cruel. However, when the living environment of adults becomes a fierce battlefield, it will inevitably affect the pond fish and play out in the land of children. I feel sorry for the excessive academic burden, excessive training tasks and excessive mental pressure of today's children, but I am powerless, so I often can't help but cross over to relive the painful childhood years of the 1960s and 1970s.
Children are naturally fun. When I was a kid, there were a lot of playmates who weren't much different from my age. In the summer, after dinner, I stopped on the floor in front of the house, and soon there were children arriving. We chased each other aimlessly, or organized by older children to play cops to catch robbers, eagles to catch chickens, etc. The children on the floor seemed to be the heart of the whole village, and their laughter and joy filled the village with vitality. Tired of playing, they will plunge into the pile of adults to listen to their ghost stories, listening to it, the body will be tight and numb, sometimes the eyes unconsciously look around, the hazy woods in the distance suddenly become particularly frightening, so they stick to the adults and dare not move, until they disperse. Sometimes in the moonlight to catch stones, hopscotch, kick shuttlecocks, jump grass rope, present a leisurely pastoral scene. During the day, you draw tops and roll iron rings, compare speed with your peers than technology, look at each other and smile, and win or lose is not important. Games and games that were purely for the joy of play, without any utilitarian overtones, accompanied my childhood and filled my childhood with joy.
When they grow up, every child has to participate in labor. Sometimes they share household chores; sometimes they also participate in collective labor and earn a certain amount of work. Sharing the housework is sweeping the floor, cutting pig vegetables and collecting firewood. When cutting pig vegetables, take a bamboo basket, take a sickle, and go to the field to find wild vegetables and wild grasses that pigs can eat. Due to the limitations of the venue, the little friends often act separately, and there is no fun. Collecting firewood is different, take a wood knife and a straw rope, or take a hoe to pick a basket, invite a few partners, talk and laugh all the way, tease and beat into the mountain, find a suitable place and start playing. The deepest impression is the climbing of trees, tea trees are not tall, curved into various shapes, toughness is particularly good, boys and girls can climb up, stand on the branches to play or lie on the branches of the tree to chat. The bitter bead tree is tall, but not strong, and the bark is rough, and girls generally can't climb it. After the bitter bead fruit ripens, it is a delicacy, very tempting, the boys climb up the tree to pick, sometimes standing on the treetops to shake, the bitter beads fall like rain, crackling, girls pick up at the bottom, smashing on the head And the hand is still a little painful, but very happy. Pine trees are also often climbed, one pine ball is an important source of firewood, and the other pine tree often has spotted doves to make doves, pound bird nests, and dig bird eggs, which is the most bad thing we did when we were children. Sometimes, like monkeys, we jump from this tree to that tree. However, there are also many dangers of climbing trees, although there are not many cases of falling down, but it is enough to withstand it once. In addition, the trunk of the tree is often made of poisonous insects into a hard shell nest, and the nest is covered with dense black burrs, which once pierced into the skin, are painful and itchy at the time, and then fester. I still have an indelible mark on my arm. Despite this, now that I think about it, I still want to climb the tree once, and there is no substitute for that happiness.
There are also very happy things on the team, such as herding cattle. Herding cattle is easy and free, and if you take the cattle out and throw them on a grassy mountain, you can do what you want to do, such as two people playing three chess, several people chatting, etc. But what I like the most is a person sitting quietly or lying on his back on the mountain: looking at the blue sky and white clouds, looking at the green mountains and green water; listening to the noise of people and cows, listening to the insects and birds. Sometimes I sing a song into the wilderness, sometimes I hum a little tune against the pine forest, and sometimes I close my eyes and think about it for a while. When the cow eats its belly round, it rides on the back of the bull and walks back leisurely, like a victorious general who returns to the dynasty. I have a cabinet in my house that depicts a cowherd riding on the back of an ox, except that the child on the back of the cow plays a horizontal flute, and I don't have a flute and can't blow it, but the happiness is similar.
A little older there are some cultural activities, mainly theater and movies. The earliest time I saw a few shadow plays and acrobatics, shadow puppet plays have seen what shows are now completely unimpressed, acrobatics can still remember a big girl walking tightrope, a little girl playing with plates, an adult spewing flames and other details. What impressed me more was to watch the Yueyang flower drum drama, which is actually what is now called the Baling opera, and dramas such as "Qin Xuemei Hanging Filial Piety", "Rolling Mat Tube", and "Xiangganzi Youlou" all made me cry. "Rolling The Sleeve" was seen on the floor of the brigade headquarters (there was no special house, in fact, a production team in a more central position), and since there was no stool to sit on, and the size was short, I climbed to a tree on the edge of the floor, crouched on the branch and watched for half a night, while watching, I shed tears, and almost fell down when I wiped my eyes with my hand. When I finished singing, my legs and feet were completely numb when I came down from the tree, and I couldn't move when I leaned against the tree for half a day. After the movie, watching the movie became a cultural feast for all rural people, and men, women and children flocked to it. What is more impressive is that the North Korean feature film "Flower Girl" has cried a lot of people, and the heroine in "A Nurse's Story" is particularly beautiful. Watching a movie is a relaxing and happy thing, as long as you hear where to put the movie, no matter how far away you will rush to it. Sometimes the information is not accurate, and it is more than a dozen miles to reach a certain village, but the result is not shown, so it is a pity to go back. The next day, someone asked what movie he had watched last night, and he said, "The hero runs away from the white road", but there is no regret, but he enjoys it.
There is a lot of joy on the way to school. Our production team is two or three miles away from the school, and this distance is a happy passage. We could chase, pick mushrooms, catch frogs, catch fish, and even sneak down to the pond to swim on our way to and from school (that's what I learned when my clumsy dog planing style was learned). Picking mushrooms is a particularly happy thing, there is a section of mountain road when you come home from school, if it is the season of long mushrooms, we search forward in the jungle, see the purple-red mushrooms propped up in the thatched pile like umbrellas, or buckled in the grass like buttons, pick them down, pull out a long thatched pole to string them up, look at the tender flesh, and salivate before they are cooked, not to mention how happy. There are also fish catching, and in the spring, when the rain is abundant, whether it is ditches, paddy fields, ponds, there is water everywhere, and sometimes we are soaked on our way to school. Not to say that groping forward in the water is both exciting and exciting, just saying that when you hear the crackling sound of crucian carp on the water far away, your heart jumps to the throat - the water in the previous field flows to the next field, or the water in the field flows to the pond, and the crucian carp will swim upwards against the water. Where the gap is large, the fish can't go up once, they don't stop flying up, and the sound is more beautiful than all the music. Under the gap where the water flows down, a shock pit is often formed, which is crowded with dense crucian carp, reaching out to grab, grabbing one accurately, folding a small branch to string them up, and returning home is a bowl of steaming delicious fish soup. Get delicious in happy play, such a childhood without regret!
Even in school, the various activities organized by the school have made us feel a lot of happiness. For example, when building the 107 National Highway, the class organized us to go to the water port to collect stones to sell money to save tuition, and more than thirty children pulled up their pants legs and looked for stones in the shallow stream, and the scene was full of joyful atmosphere. Fighting water racks, chasing small fish, catching crabs are all things that the teacher can't control, and can only remind you from the side: Don't fall! Don't fall! An afternoon of happiness and happiness is also exchanged for a tuition fee, why not! During the busy agricultural season, the school organized us to work in the production team, such as planting seedlings and planting seedlings
Grass and so on, can be regarded as the implementation of the education policy posted on the classroom wall: education should be combined with productive labor. At that time, we had less time to read and do homework, but we grew up healthily in the joy of social practice.
Of course, we will never let ourselves be lonely after school. For example, planing a few earthworms from the soil to go to the pond to fish small shrimp, kneading cotton wool into small round balls to catch toads, using rubber bands to make slingshots to hit birds, weaving a net to catch sparrows, pinching a yarrow to measure the auspiciousness, picking beautiful leaves to dry and make bookmarks, hunting fireflies in glass bottles for lanterns on summer nights, and so on. In our dealings with nature, we gain a wealth of materials, skill, intelligence and a strong physique, as well as a healthy mind and a cheerful spirit. So at that time, I never heard of the relatively prevalent autism and mental depression among teenagers today. Let our children and teenagers return to nature, it is vast and rich, selfless and unbiased, not only gifting us with the materials of life, but also giving us happiness at any time, where is the real spiritual paradise of children.
My childhood was not well supplied, even lacking food and clothing; the culture was not prosperous, even a little monotonous; my parents were not spoiled, almost wild and long. But my childhood was rooted in the soil, rooted in nature, rooted in life. Happiness is the seed that God plants in our hearts, and there is no greed in ourselves, no comparison between parents, and no mania in society, so there is nothing to stop it from opening like a flower. For children, having happiness is more important than anything else.
About the Author
Wei Shuzhi, teacher. He loves to write and has published more than 300 poems and essays in newspapers and online media.
Image: Network