"Bubble Gum_____
As soon as the bell rings at the end of class, even before the end of class bell rings, the sound of selling bubble gum rings in the playground outside the classroom, so that the hungry students unconsciously put their hands into their pockets or pants pockets and touch the 5-cent coin is still there.
The playground is also not a playground, it is a dam in a compound of rural houses in eastern Sichuan, and the village of three classes is sandwiched in different houses in the yard, and the courtyard dam has become a playground. When it was time to harvest the grain, after class, we had to stand under the eaves and take a break.
The bubble gum was white, whiter than the rice at home. The roots, such as the thickness of sugar cane, are slightly longer than the bamboo chopsticks used for eating at home, neatly stacked in a large transparent plastic bag. Students who want to buy, hand over 5 cents, sell the bubble gum from the bag to take out a stick and hand it over, immediately pinch the mouth of the bag tightly sealed, so as not to let the bag into the air to make the bubble gum become moist and soft, affect the taste, not good.
The students who bought the bubble gum, in front of the other students, sent the bubble gum to the mouth, "clicked", took a bite, and ate it with relish. Other students who wanted to eat but didn't have the money to buy it could only look at it with their eyes, quietly swallow their saliva into their stomachs, or quietly go to the side.
There are also generous students, bought bubble gum, broke into several sections, and distributed them to a few good classmates next to them, so that everyone can enjoy the blessings of the mouth, and the students who have no merit naturally have a secret heart of gratitude.
Selling bubble gum found that our purchasing power is not strong, the business is not very good, so we changed the strategy and cut off the bubble gum to sell. There are short ones that sell one points, two points, and five points, which meet the needs of different levels. He even made bubble gum color, blue, pink, green, red... The flowers are green, packed in bags, and find ways to make us use up the little pocket money that we have, and become as heavy as several purses. We are in elementary school, the reform and opening up has only begun, most families have not yet become rich, and most of the time there is no pocket money in the pockets of students.
Later, I finally found out that bubble gum is made of rice, which can be beaten (processed) in the Luodu Qujiang Machinery Factory, and the color is formed by adding pigments during processing. There is rice at home, why not go to Luodu to make some bubble gum? There is no need to look at the bubble gum seller at the end of class and drool (saliva).
After class, I asked a few classmates to go to Luodu on Sunday to play bubble gum, and there were Luo Yunhua, Luo Jian, yan Wenyou, and a few students who usually played together.
When I went home and told my parents that I was going to Luodu with a few classmates to get bubble gum, they agreed to it. Mom and Dad, who hadn't read many books, neither objected nor told me what to look out for on the way. They think that what they think is right can be done, and they will let the child do it with confidence, and will not consider the accidents that may occur when a teenage child walks on the road for more than ten miles.
For the beloved bubble gum, the road for ten miles is not a difficult obstacle. We swung the dragon gate all the way and even talked about how to deal with the bubble gum fight back. In the process of talking about the east and the west, I secretly decided that in addition to a small part of the bubble gum for the people in the family to eat, the rest can be secretly sold to the four brigades (village) schools at noon, and they can also make money.
When I arrived at Luodu Machinery Factory, there were many people who played bubble gum. People lined up in two rows, and the last one was already standing outside the gate, at least a hundred people. The machine for playing bubble gum is placed in the innermost corner of the courtyard of the machinery factory, which is not magical at all, similar to the ordinary rice machine, with a funnel containing rice on it, and in the sound of the boom, the bubble gum spits out from the side. It's just that the bubble gum that comes out is a continuous line, very long, and the person who controls the machine will break it into section by section according to your needs.
A few of us stood honestly in the rounds, watching the long line just slowly move forward. People who play bubble gum just fight, no one to maintain order, many people may be acquaintances with the person who plays bubble gum or someone said hello, come without standing on the wheel directly hit, a moment to leave.
A few of us children could only watch the line slowly squirm forward. What makes us wonder is that so many people fight in turn, and none of the adults in the team have raised any objections. The line slowly moved forward, and by three or four o'clock in the afternoon there was no bubble gum. Maybe it was the constant smell of bubble gum that filled the dam, and everyone didn't eat at noon, and they didn't feel hungry at all.
To my surprise, Liubao (aunt) found me in the afternoon at the machine shop where the bubble gum was playing. Liu Bao's home is very close to Luodu Street, that day she went back to Qifu to see her grandmother, heard my mother say that I came to Luodu to play bubble gum, and when I came home, I took a detour to see me. Liu Bao heard that I had not yet eaten lunch, so he went outside to buy a box of biscuits and told me to eat it quickly. I divided some cookies among my classmates, and everyone wiped out a box of cookies in three strokes.
Liu Bao looked at the side for a while, and then said to the person who beat the bubble gum, you can't fight like this, there have been people who have forked the round, these babies have to go back to QiFu when they fight, and they want to go to the night road. Or adults dare to speak! The bubble gum listened to Liu Bao say this, and was not allowed to fork the round again.
It was already dark when I got home with the bubble gum. I took the bubble gum to each of the people in the family and ate it, and put it in a flat bucket, ready to choose a day to detour to the four big teams at noon to sell it. At that time, my brother was studying in the four brigades, three grades lower than me, detouring to the four brigades, and I could tell my parents that I was going to send my brother to study, and they would never object.
But before I could take the bubble gum to the four brigades to sell, I came home from school one afternoon and found that the bubble gum was a little less, and called my brother to the flat barrel and asked if he had eaten it. My brother didn't admit it, which made me very angry. He did not suspect that others had eaten, and there were two older sisters in addition to his parents. I don't know how my anger grew, but I took the bubble gum in a transparent plastic bag out of the flat barrel, threw it on the ground, and stomped on the remaining bubble gum in the bag with my feet in front of my brother. My brother didn't speak, just looked at me quietly.
After stepping on it, I put the crushed bubble gum into the flat bucket. When I stepped on the bubble gum, I didn't think that the bubble gum was going to be sold to make money, and I didn't think that crushing the bubble gum was a kind of harm to my brother. Maybe my brother didn't think it was a harm to him!
It was only for the next few days, every day when I came back from school, that I took out the bubble gum that was already powdered, and my brother and you grabbed me and fed it to my mouth. Although the bubble gum is powdered, the aroma is still there, and my brother and I are very happy to eat it.
Within a few days, the powdery bubble gum was eaten by my brother and me.