The content of this article is purely fictitious, if there is any similarity, it is purely coincidental, please treat it with caution
This year is 2024, and it's been 35 years since I graduated from high school, and so much has happened in those 35 years, and our high school has had to be integrated into other schools for various reasons.
Speaking of this, everyone is still regretting in the high school group, and some people even specially turned out the group photo taken after graduating from high school decades ago and sent it to the group, which aroused everyone's interest.
Seeing that everyone was talking about the graduation photos in the group, a touch of loneliness slowly crept into my heart, and I didn't get involved in their discussions, because I knew that even if I did, it wouldn't help, because there was no me in the graduation photos at all.
This incident is also my lifelong regret, because when I was a child, my family was poor, and I couldn't pay the photo development fee of only 2 yuan.
I was born in a very poor village, where most of the people in our village had been farmers for generations, and very few of them were able to go to university, and some of them did not even go to school, and they followed their parents to work as farmers since childhood.
And the conditions of my family are not the best in the village, not only are they not the best, but they are even in the tail row of cranes.
Some families who are richer than my family do not send their children to school, so how dare a poor family like mine have the luxury of expecting it?
Although I really want to go to school, but our family only relies on dozens of acres of land in our hands to live, and it is very difficult to fill our stomachs, where is the money for me to go to school?
I told my parents what I thought, saying that I just wanted to farm well, how tiring I was from studying, how could I compare it with my current life?
Even so, the regret in my eyes was still seen by my parents, who held me tightly in their arms and cried bitterly, and the tears flowed into my mouth, which was very salty and bitter.
Three days passed like this, and when I was about to go to work in the fields as usual, I saw that my parents were not at home, so I shouted a few times and asked my neighbors to find out that they had gone out to town early in the morning.
Why did I go to town so early? I couldn't figure out what to do, so I had to work and cook and wait for my parents to come back on the little bench at home.
Finally, when it was almost noon, I finally saw the figure of my parents, only to see them holding a cloth bag in their hands, although they had been sweating profusely from the sun, but their eyes were full of joy that could not be hidden.
They called me back into the room, and then opened the package with trembling hands, only to see that the package was a semester's tuition.
Seeing this, I finally understood what my parents were doing early in the morning, they actually sold some of the family's food so that I could go to school!
I hugged my parents and began to cry, my parents gently stroked my hair with their hands, and their words were full of firmness: "Baby, you can rest assured, we will definitely be able to make up this tuition even if we smash the pot and sell iron, as long as you can study hard, we will not waste our efforts." ”
I walked into school with a sense of shame for my family and a determination to get ahead, and since then I have become a student who only knows how to study and save money.
Because of the poverty of my family, I can save money on anything I spend, and I can't even wait to break a piece of steamed bread into two meals.
However, fortunately, the school also knows that there are many extremely poor students in the school, and especially got some discounts for us students, so that we can offset the meal expenses with the food at home.
But the harvest was not high, and after paying for my meals and tuition, I basically had to go back to the classroom empty-handed.
At that time, the school was not full of poor children, and there were a small number of wealthy families, and their favorite thing to do between classes was to eat snacks, and I could only swallow frantically at the smell of food.
Maybe in order not to let me be compared with other classmates, my parents saved money and gave me 5 yuan when I was about to graduate, so that I could buy whatever I wanted.
But how could I spend money indiscriminately? 5 yuan was carefully sewn into my school bag, and I didn't think of using it anyway, but as long as I had money in my hand, no matter how hard it was, I still wanted to spend money on some things.
No, high school is about to graduate, in order to leave memories for us and the teacher, so the school decided to let the photographer come and take pictures for us, but there is a requirement, the photo is not free, if you want to pay 2 yuan.
This news made all the teachers and students boil, and they took the opportunity of the holiday to go home and ask their parents for money, after all, who doesn't want a campus memory of their own? Of course, I was included.
To save money, I walked home from school, a two-hour walk that made me hungry, and I finally got home, so I ran to the kitchen and picked up a tortilla and ate it without saying a word.
Seeing that it was almost time to eat, I also cooked the meal first and then ran to the field to let my parents go home to eat.
When I arrived in the field, I saw my mother holding the seedlings in her hand and carefully inserting them into the holes and filling them up, and my father was not far away carrying two large buckets full of water to water the seedlings.
They were very puzzled when they saw me, because I didn't tell them about today's holiday, so they were very happy about my arrival.
At the dinner table, I talked to my parents about the big and small things at school, but I didn't talk about the photos, because I knew that such a family situation would not allow me to feel comfortable with my parents asking for money.
Maybe it was because I finally got home, but my father took out the wine he usually didn't want to drink, and drank it with a plate of peanuts, and soon he began to confide in me about what had happened recently.
It turned out that during the period when I was not at home, my second uncle actually fell ill and was hospitalized! And he did not have ordinary typhoid fever, but a terrifying cancer!
Tears fell the moment I heard the news, my second uncle was the best person for me besides my parents, and he was only in his 30s, how could he suffer from such a serious illness at such a young age.
I hurriedly ran to the room and took out the 5 yuan in my schoolbag and handed it to my parents, "Parents, the second uncle is so seriously ill that he must urgently need money, I haven't touched any of the money you gave me last time, you should hurry up and see a doctor for the second uncle." “
"But what are you going to do? This is your living expenses!" My parents wanted to put the money in my pocket, but I refused: "The most important thing now is to cure my second uncle's illness, and I usually don't have much to spend, so you can accept this money with peace of mind." “
Seeing this, they can only take back the money, and see that their photos are lost, to be honest, it is not pleasant, but if I had to do it all over again, I would still make the same choice, because there is nothing more precious than life.
The next morning, my parents went to work in the fields, and I went alone to the hospital in the town to visit my second uncle.
The pungent smell of disinfectant water from the hospital pressed my heart like a big stone, leaving me breathless, and soon I was outside my second uncle's hospital room.
I watched my second uncle's hair fall out of cancer and chemotherapy outside the ward, and I couldn't bear the pain in my heart anymore, so I ran to him crying.
The second uncle saw that it was me, and his eyes finally seemed to have brilliance, he hugged my body tightly, patted my back slowly with both hands, and comforted me while patting, "Look at what you are crying about, your second uncle is not so easy to die, it's okay, let's not cry." ”
Finally, under the comfort of my second uncle, I gradually stopped crying, and when I looked at my second uncle's skinny body due to the torture of illness, my tears began to flow again.
"Look at you, why are you crying again, come, the second uncle will give you some pocket money, look at you came so early, you must not have eaten, you go to have a meal first and then come over to chat." ”
After that, the second uncle stuffed 2 yuan into my hand, urging me to hurry up to eat, and by the way, I also bought him something, he said that he had been dying of clear soup and water in his mouth recently.
Two yuan is a lot, but I don't dare to spend it, so I can only buy a little random things and hurry back to talk to my second uncle until my parents come to pick me up.
After three days of work at home, it was time to continue to go back to school, and after giving the rest of the money in my hand to my parents, I walked to school as usual, and watched the students on campus show happiness because of the money they asked for from their parents, I could only silently return to my classroom and feel sad.
Soon it was the day to take graduation photos, the weather was very good, I still remember that in the afternoon, everyone cleaned up the playground and put the tables and chairs, and then the special teachers called one class by one to take pictures.
But whether I call our class or not, I don't have anything to do with taking pictures, because people who don't pay for it can't stay in the photos.
Looking at the classmates around me, I still couldn't hold back my heart, and ran to the railing of the corridor to watch them take pictures, and my desire to make money became stronger and stronger in the sound of "eggplant".
"Hey, Xiao Nan, look at whether this is you. "Suddenly a @ in the group interrupted my thoughts, in fact, I thought they were playing tricks on me at first, but when I looked closely, it turned out that the one in the photo was lying on the railing.
At that time, I was very happy, after all, this group photo was the first group photo in my life, and it was a common memory of our teachers and students, who wants to lack such a memory?
Now I find that I have my own figure in the photo, even if it is very blurry, I am actually very happy, and the regrets in my life can be regarded as finally filled and become more flawless.
Now I have not only gotten rid of the poverty of my family, but also fought hard to find my own world in the city, my parents are still healthy, and I have my own family, I am very satisfied