Text/Bohua
Our generation, who was born in the countryside in the sixties of the last century, did not live a happy life of fine clothes and food and clothing in their childhood, but in such an era of extreme material scarcity, they experienced a hard-working life skills and attitude towards life. We spent a colorful, meaningful childhood, in a carefree age, nothing more than we in the countryside in the vast field, worship nature as a teacher, in close contact with nature, to the full release of children's nature, from which to get some of the growth process from books and school education can not get valuable life insights. Until now, when we think of our childhood experiences, those of us born in the 60s not only do not have sad emotions in our hearts, but even have an inseparable nostalgia and nostalgia.
When we came to this world, we had just experienced three years of natural disasters that countless Chinese would never forget, when the children in the countryside did not have enough to eat and could not dress warmly, and they almost relied on vegetable leaf porridge and bran vegetables for half a year to maintain the most basic life energy. The friends are almost all yellow and thin due to malnutrition, and there is no fat man, although thin, but flexible in action, so everyone jokingly calls themselves thin monkeys. We mostly wore patched clothes and open-toed shoes. The cuffs on both sides of the patched shirt are worn out, or the snot marks are shiny, and the open-toed shoes are like catfish's mouth wide open. The neck is so thin that it "jumps" and rarely bathes, making the thin neck look like a black "axle". But even so, people with great imagination today can't imagine how happy we were in the first place. In the vast world, like a bird, carefree, free, unrestrained walking on the vast field, harvesting our own happiness.
Every day, when I open my eyes and walk out of my own farmhouse, I see a large field in front of me. There is no regular road in the fields, and it winds and turns to a mysterious distance. The roadside is overgrown with weeds, wild vegetables, colorful wildflowers, and butterflies dancing among the flowers. In the eyes of us naïve kids, the field in front of us is a park where you don't have to pay for an entrance fee. Walking into the fields, we are full of wild fun that makes us happy. There is mud everywhere, not afraid of falling, there is no barbed wire, cement pillars, not afraid of being injured, completely by nature, like a reckless wind, free to run, chase, play, play, ride a tip as a big horse, different seasons, different environments, local materials, random "inventions" of all kinds of "games". The rules of the game are subject to change at any time due to differences in natural conditions. Happiness is born from the heart, without human intervention, naturally, like the weeds and wild vegetables on the roadside, although our life is not delicate, but the vitality is very strong.
In the spring, everything recovers, bathed in the warm spring breeze, and the hearts of our children also begin to itch, wandering around, waiting for opportunities to find all kinds of happy opportunities. In summer, everything is verdant, the endless greenery is overwhelming, and there are so many fun places to go. From summer to autumn, all kinds of plants and crops bear abundant fruits, and delicious game meat is uninvited, which makes us half-starved children very happy. Although the winter is cold, it can't bind us thinly clothed children, playful hands and feet, driven by temptation, ice and snow, leaving our happy footprints everywhere.
Throughout the year, nature provides us with a place to play. By the pond and under the big trees, we children, like birds in the sky and fish in the water, completely melt into the embrace of nature. Without the special care of adults, and without their strict control, they play and play happily, as if they are the masters of nature. Wrestling, opening earth battles, picking rabbits, learning donkey roars, horse roars, cows barking, sheep bleating, and roaring to the sky; under the shade of trees, the "head guessers" are divided into different orders, playing tiles, bouncing glass balls, shooting triangles, and hopscotch; on dirt roads, rolling iron hoops, smoking traitors, weaving willow hats, blowing willow whistles, and performing slingshot Xi.
After the wheat harvest and autumn harvest, there are firewood and straw stacks, play hide and seek, and climb the haystacks; after the leaves of the big poplars fall, they bump into the crutches in the open yard, or find a place to play poker and play chess in a sheltered place from the wind and the sun. In the season when insects, birds and beasts are active, it is indispensable to fight long insects, dig birds' nests, stick to know, stick dragonflies, catch knife mantises, catch grasshoppers, and take wicker strings of grasshoppers. even imitated the naughty behavior of Xiao Gazi in the movie "Little Soldier Zhang Ga" and blocked the chimney for his neighbors, such a prank was known by adults, and naturally a beating and severe discipline were indispensable.
Our childhood experiences may be regarded as naughty mischievous behavior in the eyes of modern people, but in such an era of material scarcity, our inner world also longs for happiness, and in order to satisfy our inner desires, we can only devote our children's nature to the embrace of nature, in a school without walls, to release our innocence in the pursuit of happiness. Sometimes, we will also be hurt, but once the emotions of life are attracted to nature, all kinds of harm from nature will be completely ignored.
One of the most vivid pains I remember was being pricked in the foot by thistles. In the fields, tribulus terrestris is a wild plant that can be found everywhere. Tribulus terrestris crawls on the ground, its branches extend in all directions, the branches are covered with fruits, a triangular body the size of a soybean grain, although there are not many wooden thorns on the top, but they are very hard, but no matter how you put it, there is always one side facing up, and if you are not careful, your feet will always be poked by thorns. Roadside, wilderness, everywhere, we boys who love to be barefoot will always meet you.
Once it is tied, the foot will be particularly painful, so we can't help but grin our teeth, quickly sit on the ground with bated breath, and pull the tribulus terrestris off the soles of our feet. The tall acacia tree loves the hornet's nest, we are not afraid these days, the children who are not afraid of the ground will climb the tree, wear a homemade willow hat camouflage, to poke the hornet's nest, the hornet's nest, if it is big enough, the number of hornets will naturally be very large, once the hornets are provoked, they will inevitably be retaliated.
The dark clouds of hornets swarmed around our heads, sting us with stumbling heads, so that a bag quickly bulged on our heads, and it became a "big moo" - I don't believe that any child has not been stung by a wasp. Our stubborn character is often taught by nature, and these lessons are sometimes more useful than the reminders of adults. It is from these lessons that our personalities begin to converge and become more and more consistent as we age. And gradually use a kind attitude to face nature and the environment in which they live.
I remember the fields when I was a child, the air was good and the water was good. In the hot summer, when you are tired of playing, you can sit on the ground under the shade of a tree, the cool breeze XiXi, and after a while, the whole body will become extremely comfortable and comfortable. When you are thirsty, there is a stream of a small river, and you can take a sip and drink it to your mouth, and you will feel sweet and refreshing. And in the countryside at that time, how clear the water was, the river water at that time was directly used by every household to cook, and the water quality was needless to say.
After a few days of rain in the summer, the river swells, which is naturally the best time to learn to swim. Without a coach, we, the shameless boys, went directly to the river with our bare butts, held on to the shore, and "fluttered" with our feet, splashing the waves, so unhappy. Slowly, the hands began to leave the shore, scratching in the river, lifting their feet and patting the water, gradually began to find the feeling, and then freely swam in the water, so without a teacher, I learned to swim, from the beginning of the dog planing, to the later diving, all kinds of postures, all learned.
The field is not only a large playground, but sometimes it is more like a "supermarket" with everything in our eyes. In this supermarket, there is no need to pay, as long as you do it, you can let us enjoy the taste of natural game. Picking mulberries, picking green apricots, picking gourds, eating bitter ququ vegetables, nibbling sweet sticks, eating wolfberries and wild grapes, all happen in season.
I am not afraid of "poisoning" after eating, but occasionally I will have stomach trouble. The most is to steal melons, fruits, peaches, pears and some crops, which makes people shy. The melon orchard of the production team watched closely, and we, the children, played the tricks we learned from the movie with the old men who watched the garden. Some of the people walked around in front of their eyes, sloppy eyes, and the other part of the nimble children entered the ground, pulling the melon seedlings and running back, and the melons dragged back were sometimes raw melons, and the inside was still white.
When I grew up, I understood why the elders said that "melons are ripe and falling" and "twisted melons are not sweet". Sometimes I have to hold back a few good melons, and I am very happy, and I am full of food. If you can't bend down, you can find a slope, put your head down, and control your stomach. "Stealing melons and dates is not a thief, at most you will be beaten by Wang Ba", the child has this sentence to be courageous. The wheat is very delicious when it has passed the milky maturity and enters the ripening stage. Pulling a handful of ears of wheat, an ear of ears is rubbed in the palm of the hand, squeezing out the wheat grains, blowing away the wheat fish, and the net grains in the palm of one hand are like little fat pigs. Chewy, sticky and fragrant.
As soon as the corn kernels were set to pearls, the taste was sweet, so we broke off the corn cob and "played the flute", and the white pulp of the corn beads flowed from the corners of our mouths. The sesame seeds are dried up, the upper part is open, and the quadrangular sesame horns are like trumpet flowers facing the sky, and the child bends his waist and sucks the sesame seeds in his mouth with the "flower mouth". Before the time of planing, the white potato cracked in the ridge, indicating that the white potato had been formed. Pick open the crack with your hand and pull out the potato wedges. You look for sticks, he looks for grass, he looks for the things that are most likely to ignite, he digs another pit, puts firewood and grass, puts potato pieces on it, and sets it on fire. The fire burns out, and a few more handfuls of soil are covered and waiting to be cooked. While waiting patiently, the fields smell sweet with roasted white potatoes. I was so happy to eat that I forgot to wash my face and went home with my mouth black.
If a child is only interested in playing, naughty, and not caring about the family, it is not right. We kids didn't do that. Regardless of whether there is an adult directing us or not, our hearts are very homesick. We know how to contribute to the family and take the initiative to share some of the tasks we can, such as digging wild vegetables, collecting pigweed, etc. Collect elm money, elm leaves, locust flowers, and sweet potato leaves; collect ears of wheat, ears of grain, beans, peanuts, and sweet potatoes, and provide families with a little "daily necessities" within their ability. In the age of poverty, we practiced eighteen kinds of martial arts.
Digging birds' nests on trees, fishing for fish and shrimp in the water, and the "abundance" on the dinner table also has a share of our children's achievements. I remember when we were children, we used to laugh at the people in the city for not being able to distinguish between wheat seedlings and leeks. It is in the field that we also experience the hard work of our parents, and experience the special meaning of the ancients "who knows that Chinese food is hard", which is more profound than the simple recitation of learning Xi in the classroom.
The field is a big classroom for our rural children. Every child is educated by the warmth of nature. At that time, we didn't have to take tutorial classes during the winter and summer vacations, and there were no talent classes, so we spent a lot of time in the wild, and during the "long" vacation, we had our own lively space, and the programs were very rich. Now we have grown up, we have long been parents, and even become grandfathers and grandmothers, but when we sit and chat together with nothing to do, the memories stored in our minds are almost all related to the fields of childhood, and we jokingly call ourselves children of nature.
Although it is not like today's children, who have received too much love from their families, they recall the childhood time that belonged to us, and everyone has a sense of satisfaction on their faces. Life cannot be chosen, life cannot be resisted, the experience in life is destined to belong to one's own wealth, only to cherish it!
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