People say that time is like an arrow, and the sun and the moon are like a shuttle. In fact, a person's life is really fast to the extreme. When I was young, it was like yesterday, and in the blink of an eye, I was old.
In the dead of night, old people often like to reminisce about old things. And the most remembered is the two words "friend"!
All my life, I love making friends. There are like-minded friends, friends who are interested in hobbies, friends who are classmates, and friends who work together. There are peasant friends who went to the countryside to join the queue, and there are worker friends who work after returning to the city, and people say "three hundred and sixty lines", but I don't care what my friends are doing. As long as you get along well, you can become friends. My friends have older friends, middle-aged friends, and younger friends. If you have a boyfriend, of course, you can't miss a girlfriend.
I also have a characteristic, I never throw away a friend easily, as long as my friend doesn't do something sorry for me, I will recognize this friend for the rest of my life.
Among the many friends, there is one friend who is more special. Listen to the story of this friend.
1971 was the fourth year that I went to the rural areas of Yancheng and Xixiang in northern Jiangsu. It was also my second year as a barefoot doctor in the brigade clinic. It was in the spring of that year. There is a Beijing educated youth in Zhuangzi.
This male intellectual, originally cut the queue in Inner Mongolia. It is said that his father was a cadre of a newspaper of the Xinhua News Agency in Beijing. Before liberation, he had served as a cadre of the New Fourth Army in the Yancheng area, and he was quite familiar with the area, and now many of the leaders at all levels in this area are his former subordinates. In order to have local leaders to take care of his son, he transferred his son from Inner Mongolia.
This educated youth is one year younger than me and his surname is Yin. 1.78 meters tall, typical northern male appearance. Because he knew that I was an educated youth from Jiangnan, the so-called "connected by the same fate", he often came to my clinic to sit, smoke and chat. One comes and goes. Gradually, he became more and more warm with me. After a period of getting along. I feel that Xiao Yin has a bold personality and is generous. He doesn't think carefully about people. It's the type I like. After a while, Xiao Yin became my closest friend. I also think of him as my own brother.
Soon after, he stopped going to the peasant's house where the cadres of the brigade had arranged for him to stay, so he took the quilt and went directly to the clinic at night to sleep with me in a bunk.
During that period of time, he and I truly achieved "sharing blessings and hardships." "If there is a piece of meat, you should also use chopsticks to clip it in half, and one half for each person. There's only one cigarette left, you take a puff, I'll take a puff.
Of course, his family conditions are obviously much better than mine, and his family sends him money at the beginning of each month. But because he is usually bold, he is used to it. As soon as there was money around him, he regarded himself as a rich man, and went to the street into the restaurant to invite Zhang San and Li Si. Buy a few packs of good cigarettes and throw one away when you see someone. After half a month, the pocket bottomed out. In the second half of the month, I relied on the five yuan sent by my family every month to maintain the pocket money for two people.
Basically, he was the "emperor" in the first half of the month, and I was the "housekeeper" in the second half of the month.
Xiao Yin and I have been like brothers for more than a year. Finally, in seventy-four years, he was recommended by the commune to go to Nanjing Institute of Chemical Technology. I wasn't surprised that he went to college. His father brought him here for the day he was waiting. In itself, he Xiao Yin is Miao Honggenzheng, a descendant of revolutionary cadres. It makes perfect sense to go to the University of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers. As the child of one of the four types of people, what reason is there to be jealous?
After Xiao Yin left, there was a period of time when I did feel lost and melancholy. I always wish he could send me a letter. However, it is a pity. Xiao Yin never sent me a word. I know Xiao Yin very well, he is a rough and unruly person. So it's entirely possible not to write to me.
In the years that followed, I also returned to Wuxi. All I know about Xiao Yin is that he may have made a family in Nanjing after graduation. I don't know about the rest.
By 2004. Once, when I was chatting with a friend from the public security department, I talked to him about this Xiao Yin. I miss him very much, but he is lost in the sea and there is no news. A friend from the police asked me if I had any clues? I told him that his name was "Yin XX" and that he had entered the Nanjing Institute of Chemical Technology in 74 years. It is possible to settle in Nanjing.
Unexpectedly, two days later, a public security friend called me and said that this person had been found, and there were more than a dozen people surnamed Yin in Nanjing, and his home was indeed in Nanjing. and gave me a phone number for his home.
That's good news for me, of course. With a nervous mood, I made a phone call in Nanjing.
It was a lady who answered the phone. I first asked if it was Yin XX's home. The lady over there asked me who I was. I briefly introduced myself: "I haven't seen him for decades, I miss him very much!" She was silent for a moment and said: "Yin XX is my ex-husband, he has now gone to the United States and has settled in the United States. When I heard this, I was dumbfounded. The lady continued: "However, you can tell me your mobile phone number, his daughter, who is also my daughter, is now in Beijing, and he will get married in a few months, he will come back from the United States, and I will also go to Beijing, and when the time comes, I will tell him your mobile phone number, and it is up to him to decide whether to contact you or not!"
After saying that, the lady hung up the phone.
Maybe the lady forgot about it, maybe Yin XX can't remember me anymore. Maybe I'm afraid I'm going to hit his autumn wind. So my mobile phone has never received a call from Xiao Yin back then, and Lao Yin now.
"Friend, friend, have you ever thought of me?"
Late at night, Xiao Yin's face will flash in my mind, although he is now far away on the other side of the Atlantic, but I can't erase his figure in my mind, because he used to be my friend!