My First 20 Years

I got confused by a simple math question just now, about how many years I have gone through. It’s my 21 year old birthday today, but it’s the beginning of the 21th year. So I finally made it clear that I have actually lived 20 years.

When I was young, time went second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour. It sounds like a sophisticate to begin a paragraph by saying ‘when I was young’. But now time flies year by year and I am just numb about that, until I suddenly find I have passed 20 years. How many 20 years is one gonna have?

I don’t plan to recall what I have done in the past 20 years. Memory is just the contrary to time. When I search in my mind and display those fragments about the early years, the scenes slide in a fast forward way and they even become blank every time I try to grab something from the earlier points. But the scenes gradually slow down as I continue to play the tape of my memory.

I find myself has fallen into a kind of self-compulsion. I tend to force myself to forget everything about the past. As a result I had no idea when the professor was talking about Fourier Transformation last semester, though I’d just learnt it several months earlier in China. I once read a book about memory and it said that human tend to forget the unpleasant things for self-protective reasons.

The bad news is I cannot even recall some happy experience. Am I a pessimist? Oh no. What are the first 20 years of a pessimist to be like? I really did not want to define myself as a pessimist and denied those happy moments I shared with my dear ones. I started to print photos I took and sent some of them to my friends.

I asked my roommates in ZJU to check mail box. One of them told me that a girl said she missed me so much. Omg I’ve almost forgot how she looks like.

But then I was able to uncover the whole thing. There was such a time that I asked her out every night…to study! Oh what a stupid idea! But I was able to sit very properly and finished all my homework. And on our way back I was saying exaggerated words for myself. What was she feeling like? I don’t know.

I tend to talk a lot about girls with my male friends but in fact waste no thoughts on girls’ ideas. Even about that girl, I was instigated by my roommates. They said she is the prettiest girl in our class although I actually did not see any girl in that class as pretty (I heard about that several really beautiful girls switched into that class after I changed my major).

I forget what we talked on the way back now.

Why were we walking back?

Oh, I remember now. She didn’t know how to ride a bicycle and I didn’t have a back seat on mine.

Whether she spoke something or not?

Oh, it seems she did talk about her father!

No! She was saying that I was like her farther. What a poor description! No wonder I forget the whole thing. But there must be something about those nights still remaining in my mind.

The shining stars, the ringing bells from bikes of the passers-by, a mixture of  the fragrance from the flowers together with the mugginess after the military training, or a certain kind of impulse when we first gained a feeling of freedom.

Oh, how could I forget those beautiful summer nights! I have not even seen a girl riding on a back seat of a bicycle here.

Was there once a girl lying on the grassland next to me by the Qizhen lake talking about her dream? Did I promise a girl to present a bouquet at the end of drama performance but I just sit quietly watching her helpless face on the stage? Was there a midnight by the West Lake I bought a girl roses after an old woman chatter endlessly to sell them? Was there a girl that grabbed my oranges every day and taught me to take off the skin rather than cut them? Was there a mid-autumn night when a girl had crabs and beers with me in an empty classroom?  

Whether I played beautiful piano songs for them? Whether I held one of them on my back to watch fireworks? Whether I sang karaoke with them all night long? Whether I was forced to pay them a big meal after I got awards?

Now I doubt whether I’ve actually done those things. Were the girls separated ones or were they the same girl? What if they were just made up by me?  I no longer believe in what is in my memory, but why I still clearly remember what one ordered in the restaurant and what another’s favorite song was.

Oh, they all exist, in the most beautiful time of my life!

I suddenly realize how romantic the life in ZJU was. Students are protected not to be exposed to society too early and  they can enjoy a 4 year long freedom, which is a best gift in their life. And I cannot complain any more about why I never win girls’ favour. It is me who have never treasured those memories.

I just somehow miss some very things of the past so much – A restaurant where I had dinner with weisuo and a corner in high school where we got a good look of the sister who raised national flag and other pretty girls; A small canteen where we stood up and called linda ‘big boss’; The football court where huangwenzhi shot the football towards dead angle of a goal and fucked the security staff off, and where a black guy said to manwu ‘你踢得很好’.

‘I’ll feel too lonely to finish a meal by myself’, I remembered a girl once told me those words in fengwei canteen of ZJU.

(end)

written on Jan 6, 2011

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