Shi Tiesheng: My kindergarten

When I was five, or six, I went to kindergarten. One day, my mother said to my grandmother, "This child still has to go to kindergarten, or he will not be able to adapt to primary school in the future." After that, she went out to inquire and see which kindergarten still enrolled. In her grandmother's words, she has always been like this, remembering that one play is another. Soon my mother found out about a kindergarten that had just opened and was close to home. When my mother told my grandmother, there was something that made me wonder: it was done by two old girls.

When my mother took me to sign up, it was late and the kindergarten door was closed. When my mother knocked on the door, I looked through the crack in the door: a quiet courtyard with two brand-new wooden horses under one of the eaves. Two Trojan horses made my heart flutter. My mother asked me, "Do you want to come?" I nodded firmly. It was an old lady who opened the door, and she led us into a cottage where there was also an old lady who was cooking dinner. In addition to the two beds, there was only a table and a stove. My mother asked me to call the fatter one who wore glasses Mr. Sun, and the thinner one Mr. Su.

I couldn't figure it out for a long time, why did I call these two old ladies old girls? I asked my mother, "Why isn't Grandma an old girl?" The mother said, "A woman who has never been married is an old girl, and a grandmother has been married." But I don't accept that explanation in my heart. If you get married, but if you give a few pieces of candy to everyone to eat, will it have any special effect? In my mind, women are girls when they are young, and they are all old ladies when they are old, how can there be such a nondescript title as "old girl"? I asked my mother again, "Have you ever bought candy for everyone?" The mother said, "Why?" Why should I buy candy for everyone? "Are you ever married?" My mother laughed and tugged at my ears: "Do I dare to have you without being married?" "The more confused I became, why did you get involved with me again?

This kindergarten is far from what I expected. There is even a family living in the four north houses, who is the landlord. The South House was empty. There are classrooms on the east and west sides, and there are no desks and chairs in the classroom, except for a blackboard, and the children have to bring their own small benches every day. The small bench is high and low, and the twenty or so children are also high and low, the eldest is seven years old, and the younger one is three years old. During class, the big shouted and cried, and the teacher scolded this and coaxed that, which was basically chaotic. Classes are always about storytelling. "Where was it last time?" The children replied in unison: "Big-gray-wolf-want-eat-small-mountain-goat-!" "Usually someone raises their hand at this moment and can't hold back their pee, or they actually have finished peeing. A story can be told on and off for days. "Where was it last time?" "No—listen—talk—little—mountain—goat—been—eaten—dropped!"

After class, everyone went to grab the two wooden horses, you pushed me, and no one could really ride them. The older children then invented another game, "Fighting on Horseback": one on their backs, screaming and killing and shouting to the sky, and those who turn on their backs are defeated. The two old ladies—call them as I understand them—chased and shouted in terror all over the yard: "Don't like this, don't like this, look broken!" Look at Grandma Liu's flowers! "Grandma Liu, the landlord, can't figure out how she can tolerate running a kindergarten in her yard. But "fighting on horseback" is in full swing, the war is resting here, and the smoke is rising again. It was supposed to be fun, but somehow there were rules for punishing prisoners of war. Wouldn't it be too cheap for those who fell to fall off the horse to be seen only as the generals of the defeated army? Therefore, they will be knocked out of their brains, or they will be brought back to the enemy with men and horses. And then there were traitors, and more severe punishments for traitors. Once the traitor was caught, he was escorted by two people, "paraded through the streets" with their hands behind their backs, and was pulled by their hair and twisted their ears along the way. God knows why this punishment turned out to be more tempting than the "war on horseback" itself, and later, there was no need to "fight on horseback" to play the game of punishment. But who are the punished? Then one or two leaders emerged, and they had the final say, and they said that whoever was a traitor was a traitor, and whoever was a traitor was of course punished. Thus, human nature was then exposed: in order to avoid punishment, everyone went to the one or two chiefs, sycophants, flatterers, and only more straightforward than adults. But! But in order to play this game, there must always be a punished. The terrible days have finally arrived. Terrible days are bound to come, just like growing age.

Being a traitor is much scary than being a prisoner. Captives can still show loyalty and hope for the future; The traitor is completely hopeless, and suddenly everyone abandons you. At the age of five or six, I had seen one of the most helpless situations in the world. Your only prayer is that the two old ladies come quickly, and come to an end to this ridiculous game. But you will find that the punishment does not end with them stopping it, it spreads all the time, to the faces and hearts of all children. A gentle but harsh rejection, like a monsoon, blows silently from day to night, with no escape, nowhere to tell, and no one knows its origin, until it suddenly turns, like an unpredictable weather, an unpredictable fate, and suddenly lets go of you, and turns around to play tricks on another child.

I don't want to go to kindergarten anymore. I fear the morning and look forward to the evening. I started pretending to be sick and started trying my best to stay at home with my grandmother, coming up with all sorts of reasons not to go to kindergarten. Until now, when I see the children crying and shouting not to go to the kindergarten, my heart trembles, and I imagine that there is such a terrible game in their kindergarten, and I feel that there are ghosts wandering in the daytime.

The kindergarten really didn't make a good impression on me. But those two old ladies have always been in my memory, one is fatter and the other is thinner, both are so kind, both so busy and flustered. They are afraid that any child will fall and touch it, and they are afraid of damaging the flowers of the landlord Grandma Liu, so they always hang a heart. But in addition to such fears, I always feel that in the bottom of their hearts, behind the imperceptible panic, there is another fear. What else is afraid? I can't tell, but it must be heavier.

Growing up, I sometimes wondered about their backgrounds. They may be cousins or just friends since childhood. They must all be well-educated—they all play the organ well, as evidenced by that. When I first arrived at the kindergarten, I always heard them make a wish to the children: "We are going to buy an organ, the kindergarten will soon have an organ, and slowly the kindergarten will add a lot of toys, are the children happy?" "Gao-Xing!" Shortly before I left, the organ was bought. The two old ladies regarded it as a treasure, gently carried it into the courtyard door, rubbed it up and down to shine, and placed it in the most eye-catching place in the classroom, the children gathered around and held their breath, and then Teacher Su and Teacher Sun pushed each other, and then the children couldn't wait and began to talk nonsense, and then Teacher Sun sat down solemnly in front of the organ, the children's encirclement tightened more and more, and then the sound of the piano sounded and the children cheered, Teacher Su smiled and raised a finger: "Shh-shhh-" The whole room was quiet again, The children couldn't help but marvel, but they couldn't help the excitement in their eyes...... That day, I didn't tell stories anymore, just listened to Teacher Su and Teacher Sun take turns playing the piano and singing. It was then that I realized that they were indeed different from ordinary old ladies, and there was innocence in every wrinkle on their faces. I can still hear the sound of the piano. Now, every time I encounter something innocent and pure, the sound of the piano is like a wisp of waft of waft, in front of my eyes, in my heart, a piece of sunshine appears, beating like the keys. I think they must have grown up in a very cultured family. I think their parents must have been gentle and understanding. They grew up with the sound of the piano, and although there was occasional light wind and drizzle, it was always sunny. It is impossible for such a woman not to have sacred expectations for love when she is young, and it is even inevitable that she will be extreme and out of fashion. They whispered about the future and said blushing and heartbeat words to each other. The so-called future is mainly a man who is about to come to them out of nowhere. This man is already evident in the book, looming in the well-bound literary masterpieces. It won't be the son-in-law in romance novels. It could be, for example, Tolstoy's characters, but by no means Vronsky or Karenin. However, the depiction of the future is always not clear, and the continuous depiction consumes their youth year after year. In the words of the "revolutionary people": they are truly the extreme of the "little bourgeois", dreaming of petty-bourgeois warmth in isolation in those turbulent years. Probably so. Maybe that's it. Suppose so, but suddenly! Suddenly, society has changed dramatically. It is hard to imagine how that change will affect their lives, but it is unlikely that there is anything too special about it, and like all decaying middle-class families, the young ladies are horrified and wide-eyed to find that they must live another life. Wandering, relying on relatives and friends, cutting back on food and clothing, and drifting with the tide, like experiencing the ups and downs and the heat and coldness on the sea that has lost its direction...... Then, one day, the situation seemed to be stable, but it was clear that the future could no longer be drawn as willfully as before. The previous depictions were like a stack of carefully preserved old banknotes, which were useless, but they were reluctant to throw them away for a while, and it was at that time that celibacy went from helplessness to firmness. They all still have a little bit of valuable things in their collections, but they don't have a lot of them together, and they can't be considered a perfect solution, only that their future life depends on this. In this way, the severity of reality combined with the romance of the past, and finally had an idea: let's set up a kindergarten. An innocent child is inspiration, confidence and joy. Kindergarten? That's right, kindergarten! There is no quarrel with the world, poverty and happiness, and the rest of our lives to water our future with all our might, does it? The two old girls seemed to have finally found their homeland, and after more than half a century, they finally heard the generous promise of fate. Then they rented a house, painted it briefly, bought two blackboards and a pair of wooden horses, and the rest of the stuff was left to rest later, of course, it was a matter of money......

When I was about to graduate from elementary school, I went back to the kindergarten to see it. Sure enough, there are swivel chairs, slides, and climbing frames, and there are all tables and chairs in the classroom, and there are several times more children than before. The landlord, Grandma Liu's house, has moved out. A young female teacher plays the organ under the porch of the north house, and the children rehearse the show in the courtyard to the sound of the piano. A south house has been converted into a kitchen, so that children can eat in the kindergarten. The young female teacher asked me, "Who are you looking for?" I said, "What about Teacher Su and Teacher Sun?" "They? Already retired. "I went home and told my mother, who said that what kind of retirement is because their birth and class composition are not suitable for education. Later, when the Cultural Revolution began, I heard that they were all sent back to their hometowns.

When the "Cultural Revolution" was in desperation, one day I met Mr. Sun on the street. Her hair was a little messy, and she walked with straight eyes, still hurried and flustered. I called out to her, and she stood still, looking at me blankly. I said my name, "You don't remember me?" Her face was dead, and for a long time, she suddenly came back to life: "Ah, it's you, oops, I really wronged you that time." I feigned surprise: "Wronged? I? "Actually, I already know what she's referring to." But you won't come afterwards. Teacher Su told me, this really hurts the child's heart, right? ”

That was shortly before I started elementary school. In front of the classroom in the East House, a group of children rushed in, and another group of children resisted the door and refused to let them in, not for a reason, but just a game. I pushed the door hard in the middle of the crowd, and suddenly the crack in the door pressed my fingers, and in the pain I kicked the door open, knocking a girl on her back. The girl had a bleeding nose and a bag on her head, and she kept crying. Teacher Su came over to coax her and punished me for standing at the same time. I stood in front of the window and watched the other children in class, and I felt aggrieved, so I scribbled on the window lattice with crayons of white paper, drawing an old lady and marking the word "Su" next to it. When Mr. Su found out, the snow-white window lattice was already covered with old ladies and "Su". Teacher Su's lips trembled, and he could only say one sentence: "That's what Teacher Sun and I have been messing around for days...... After that, I said goodbye to the kindergarten, on the grounds that I was about to go to elementary school, in fact, I didn't dare to see the window lattice again.

Teacher Sun hasn't changed much, only his hair has turned gray, and his former kindness has also merged into a panic. I asked, "What about Teacher Su, how is she?" Teacher Sun looked up at the top of my head, guessed my age, and then whispered to me in the tone of an adult, "We are all married, and we are all busy with our own homes." "I thought it was not appropriate for me to ask any more questions because of my age, but since then, I have always wondered what kind of man and what kind of home it will be. For example, does it match their early expectations? Can it be in harmony with the sunny sound of the piano?