Chapter 5: My Little Gangster Deskmate

The new semester has been over for quite a while, and my progress in study is very smooth. My grades are steadily maintained in the top 15 of the class. We are in a small key class. According to the past situation, the top 20 students can basically pass the entrance examination to the key high school. However, life caught my family off guard at this time. In 1997, the wave of layoffs ruthlessly affected my family, and both parents were laid off. In order to support the family, my father ran around looking for a job, and finally he could only do physical work. But who would have thought that this job would actually tire his waist and suffer from sciatica. The condition was so serious that he couldn't even move when it hurt, and he had to be hospitalized for treatment.

My mother took good care of my father in the hospital every day. The family's financial situation suddenly became stretched, and they could only rely on their previous savings to barely make a living. Every time my mother and I went to the savings bank to withdraw money, I could see the unconcealable sadness on her face, and she couldn't stop sighing. Once, I couldn't help but secretly glance at the passbook. The number on it made me feel nervous. The family's savings were only more than 3,000 yuan, and there was no source of income. Life was quite difficult. In fact, in 1997, for a family of three, if they lived frugally, 3,000 yuan could barely support half a year.

Since then, I have to bring food from home to school every day, and heat it in the microwave to eat at school. The meals at home have become simpler, and I rarely eat meat. During that time, I lost a lot of weight. In fact, even now, I am not fat.

In school, not many male students bring food. Most of them choose to go out to buy food, and few people order the boxed lunches provided by the school. Many students whose homes are closer to the school will go home for dinner, and it is basically female students who bring food. My deskmate, Xiao Taimei, is naturally the type who does not bring food. I heard that someone invites her to dinner every day at noon. Yang Fang, who sits in the row in front of me, happens to bring food, while her deskmate Wang Dong does not bring food. I forgot to introduce Wang Dong, the slightly sleazy boy. He is a game expert and knows all kinds of 8-bit machines, Sega games and arcade machines. Every day after class, he would turn around and brag to me about how good he was at playing games. I also like playing games, so we had a very good chat.

One day, Wang Dong asked me mysteriously: "Have you played "Red Alert"?" I thought about it in confusion, shook my head and said: "No." He then asked: "Do you have a computer at home?" It's quite embarrassing to say that I had never seen a computer at the age of 17. I could only answer honestly: "Computers are too expensive, my family can't afford it, and I haven't seen it."

Wang Dong said that his family didn't have a computer either, but there was a computer room near the school. He had been there once with his elementary school classmates. It cost 3 yuan an hour. There was a game called "Red Alert" in it, which was super fun. When I heard this, my heart was immediately filled with curiosity, so we agreed to go and play for an hour after school the next day. There were no Internet cafes in those days. There were only some secretly operated computer rooms, which were basically privately opened at home, and there were only about ten computers in them.

The next day after school, Wang Dong and I couldn't wait to go to the computer room. This was the first time I had ever come into contact with a computer. I had only seen it on TV before. We only played for an hour. Since it was my first time, it took me nearly half an hour to learn how to use the mouse and keyboard. Most of the operations were taught by the young boss in the computer room who was in his twenties. As for "Red Alert", I didn't understand it at all, after all, the time was too short. At that time, the system used was Windows 95. In fact, the school also opened computer classes from the second year of junior high school, but it used the DOS system. Some machines didn't even have a mouse. In that era, the school didn't pay enough attention to computer classes.

Let's go back to the topic of bringing lunch. At noon, when eating at school, everyone usually ate with two or three classmates. Because there were too few male classmates who brought lunch, I was too lazy to find them, and Yang Fang also ate lunch alone, so I shamelessly invited her to come over and eat with me. The relationship between boys and girls in the first year of junior high school is relatively innocent, and she agreed very readily. Since then, we have eaten together face to face every day at noon, which is also the happiest time of my day. We usually talk about study, or listen to her talk about interesting things in school, and I don't mention my past not-so-glorious deeds.

One day at noon, we ate on the desk of the little gangster girl, and accidentally made the table full of oil. When the little gangster girl came back at noon and saw it, she was furious. Although the little gangster girl and I were deskmates, we rarely communicated with each other. Sometimes we only said a word every two or three days, and it was basically because of study. The little gangster girl pointed at me and shouted: "Did you eat on my desk? It smells like mutton. Don't you have a table of your own?"

In fact, given the economic situation of my family at that time, we couldn't afford to eat mutton. Usually, we just put a little pork in the vegetables. Eating mutton exclusively was too luxurious for our family. The mutton was eaten by Yang Fang. Yang Fang was a female classmate. None of the female classmates in our class were not afraid of the little gangster girl. In fact, many male classmates were also a little afraid of her. In that era, it was unheard of for a junior high school student to wear sunglasses to school every day, but the little girl was like that, and her hairstyle was also very avant-garde, with the most popular cut in our city at that time.

Facing the little girl's questioning, I felt a little guilty and whispered, "I'm sorry, I forgot to wipe the table for you." The little girl glared at me fiercely and said viciously, "You are not allowed to eat at my table in the future. If you do it again, you will see!" I was very dissatisfied. It was just eating at her table. Was it necessary to get so angry?

Since this incident, Yang Fang did not dare to go back and eat with me again. I guess she was scared by the little girl. She found other female classmates to eat lunch together. I really couldn't swallow this breath, and secretly decided in my heart that I must find a way to replace the little girl, even if I changed a fat girl or an ugly girl to be my deskmate, it would be better than sitting with her.

After returning home, I lay on the bed and tossed and turned for a whole night, and finally thought of a good way that I thought was foolproof. The next day when I went to school, I took a stainless steel ruler, made up my mind, and hit my arm twice. My arm turned red instantly. Now when I think back, I feel that I was really cruel to achieve my goal.

After the second class, it was time to do eye exercises and break exercises. I didn't do the exercises, but went directly to the teacher's office. I found the head teacher and pretended to be very aggrieved and said: "Teacher, my deskmate hit me." As I said that, I showed the scars on my arm to the head teacher, and made up a lie that the little gangster girl stole my steel ruler because I accidentally touched her when writing in class, and then hit me with the steel ruler. Finally, I asked to change my deskmate. In fact, the head teacher also knew that the little gangster girl was not a quiet student, because she was often seen smoking with a group of gangsters at the school gate. I secretly hoped that I could successfully get rid of this difficult deskmate.

Since the beginning of the school year, there has been an eye-catching "scenery" in the school. The little rascal often appeared in the girls' restroom and the school gate, with a cigarette in her mouth, showing her self-righteous "uniqueness" while puffing smoke. She was one of the "7 sisters" in the first grade of junior high school, ranking sixth in this small group, so everyone called her the 6th sister. Speaking of this, we have to mention those "special" small groups in our school. In fact, in every school, especially in the 1990s, such situations were not uncommon.

There was a "5 tyrants" in the third grade of junior high school, a small group composed of five third-grade students. They acted in a strong style and seemed to always want to highlight their presence on campus; there was a "13 brothers" in the second grade of junior high school. These thirteen second-grade students got together and formed a unique small force. The freshmen in the first grade of junior high school, who had just entered school for less than two months, also quickly integrated into this "campus culture". Nine boys formed the "9 dragons", and the first-grade girls were not to be outdone and formed the "7 sisters", which was much more powerful than the seniors. The little rascal was famous among the "7 sisters". Almost everyone in the school knew about it, and even the teachers had heard of it. That was the atmosphere in the school at that time. As long as students had good academic performance and did not violate discipline and deduct class scores, and did not affect the teacher's bonus, most teachers would turn a blind eye.

Once, I really couldn't stand the little girl's various behaviors, so I reported the situation to the head teacher. After listening, the head teacher said to me: "I know, you go back first, wait until I finish preparing the lesson, and then deal with this matter." I returned to the classroom with a trepidation, and then attended two classes, but the teacher did not show up. It was not until the noon nap that the head teacher finally came to the classroom. He looked at me and then said, "Sun Yao, come out." I thought to myself, it's over, why did the teacher call the little girl out, why didn't he just change our seats? I was anxious, if the teacher found out that I exaggerated, it would be bad, don't ask the parents.

Not long after, the little girl came back, she stared at me fiercely, sneered and said, "You wait for me." I thought to myself that it was completely over. Then, the head teacher called me out again. The teacher said to me earnestly: "Huang Zhong, the teacher knows that you are in adolescence now. Children at this stage are more active and have more ideas, but you still have to pay attention to your words and deeds in school and restrain yourself. How could you do such a thing? This is not okay. The teacher has to talk to your parents." I was stunned for a moment, and I didn't understand why the teacher suddenly talked about adolescence.

The head teacher continued: "You touched the chest of a female classmate, how could she not be angry? Even if it was accidental, it is normal for the female classmate to have some reaction." It suddenly dawned on me that the little gangster girl was the first to complain and then bit me back. This is too insidious and cunning! I hurriedly explained to the teacher, but the teacher didn't believe me at all. In the teacher's eyes, my explanation seemed to be a cover-up. In the end, I was severely educated by the teacher. However, the teacher turned to comfort me and said: "You should continue to sit at the same table with Sun Yao. She just has bad behavior habits, but she is not bad in nature. And you have good academic performance, so you can help her with her studies." I understood that the teacher meant that I had been sitting at the same table with the little girl for more than two months, and no one else wanted to sit with her. Since I had adapted to it, I should continue to maintain the status quo.

My plan was completely ruined. What was waiting for me next was probably the revenge of the little girl. During the afternoon class, I was completely absent-minded. The little girl ignored me as usual. She ran to the toilet as soon as the get out of class was over, and she always smelled of cigarettes when she came back. When school was about to end, the little girl said to me: "Follow me after school, don't think about running, go through the main entrance of the school." I knew in my heart that she must have found someone to "teach" me a lesson. In order to avoid those troublemakers in the school, I really spent a lot of time during this period. I only dared to go to the toilet once a day at school, which was at lunch time, because there was no one in the toilet at that time, and I was really afraid of meeting classmates who had a feud in the toilet before. Every time I went to the toilet at noon, I had to hold it in for a long time, and sometimes I would even be embarrassed. Every day after school, I would deliberately take a detour through the small gate of the school and go to the bus station. Wang Dong often laughed at me and said, "Are you like me, with a small penis and embarrassed to go to the toilet?" I have seen Wang Dong's situation. He does have some physiological problems. I heard that he was often laughed at in the toilet, but he is thick-skinned and doesn't care.

After school, I wanted to rush out of the classroom and run away in the chaos, but the little gangster girl seemed to see through my thoughts and said, "If you run away today, I will find someone to find you in the classroom tomorrow. Think about it yourself." When I heard this, this little gangster girl was really a difficult character. She spoke and acted very "gangster-like". There was no way, I could only follow her obediently, watching her back in school uniform and jeans. At that time, the gangsters in the school liked to dress like this, which not only complied with the school's uniform regulations, but also made them stand out. The little gangster girl swung her buttocks when she walked, but I just felt annoyed and thought to myself: What an annoying girl.