Negative photography // Hometown (2): Adults look at the journey of primary school students

My primary school is halfway up the mountain. In my city, legend has it that there are only two primary schools on the ground, so it is not unusual for my primary school to be halfway up the mountain. Elementary school students such as me silently grow up proud. That is, we don't have uniforms. We only need to wear sportswear on Saturdays of the week. If I remember correctly (I forgot whether it is also required on Wednesdays), except for Saturdays and sports meetings, all primary school students are free to wear clothes.

I have always had a small dream of going to school in a uniform, that is, girls can tie two pigtails, wear a small blue pleated skirt, a white shirt, and an orange hat, walk out of the house happily, arrive at the school after a few corners, and enjoy Easy commute to and from school. Because there is no uniform, I once rolled my eyes, thinking that the elementary school students in TV and comics all wearing uniforms are deceptive. It took years to finally embrace and be proud of such experimental freedom.

I don't have a uniform, and I don't have long enough hair. Every time I grow a little longer, my mother will cut it off. The school is halfway up the mountain, and every time I think of walking to school, the feeling of burnout spreads all over my body. Ten minutes later, my father or mother took me into the school Chuantang on a motorcycle.

The way to school is in the perception of elementary school students, and it is very long. I just checked on Google Maps and found that it is only 450 meters away from my home. The distance to the classroom is at most 500 meters. Unexpectedly, after more than 20 years, I found that I had played a lot of temper for this little road when I was a child, and I was instantly ashamed.

The way to school is tiresome, but the way out of school makes me look forward to it.

The school stipulates two routes to guide students to cross the road. At the earliest, the school also established a traffic team or a picket team. The seniors were responsible for on duty on three roads during the commute to and from school. I have loved to dig different routes since I was a child, and soon found that there are many stairs and paths beside the regular road to and from school, and all the paths lead to my house, so I can reach the bottom of the mountain relatively quickly. The little head decided to start rebelling, "Why do you have to walk to and from school with the team according to the teacher's regulations?" I have to go my own way.

At that time, I couldn't understand the necessity of the regulations, so I quickly found a female classmate and two male classmates in the same grade, and a total of three fellow travelers formed an expedition team. The female classmate and I live in the same alley, and we need to cross two roads to get to and from school. Male classmate A crosses the same road with us to go to the cram school, while male classmate B lives by the stairs and does not need to cross the street.

We started from the path that male classmate B walked through. When the leader was not paying attention, we slipped into the path and then said goodbye to each other, then went home or went to the cram school. This kind of expedition is carried out gradually. Seeing that there is only the last staircase left, the male classmate B said that he is not sure whether this can be done.

So the four elementary school students who didn't know the heights of the sky chose a day to go together, resolutely jumped down the stairs when the team was not paying attention, turned the corner and continued to walk, and entered the part with the roof over their heads. There is a small gravel concrete wall, there are many pairs of neatly arranged shoes at the corner of the wall, and there is a gate right now. We began to sense something was wrong, and through the hole above the fence, we found that the other side was the path we used most often. The four clever and eccentric people realized in an instant, "Ah, we broke into the house." But there was no rush. They calmly and quietly opened the iron door, closed it carefully, took a deep breath and walked down the stairs quickly, turning a corner When he found that no one was chasing after him, he began to relax and laugh.

We were not always lucky enough to enjoy the thrill of adventure. After leaving the team for a long time, I will still meet the teacher after all. Once again, my classmates and I left the team again. We walked from the stairs to the small stationery store, the Literature Hall, at the foot of the mountain. We were watching the stickers, stationery items, and toys that the store entered, and we saw the teacher coming to the door. I don't remember how strong the sun was at the time, but the teacher's figure had transformed into a dark shadow with a human-shaped aperture around it under the backlight. The next day we were ordered to stand.

Because of being caught by the teacher, and as the grades grew older, the students began to be sent to different cram schools by their parents after class, and the story of the little expedition team ended for the time being. Later, when I was walking on the way to and from school when I was a child at the pace of an adult, the roads and paths seemed narrower and shorter than I remembered. I don’t understand why the steep and long uphill that I hated in the first place was actually gone in less than five minutes. Done.

Every time I walk this road, I think of the wonderful self-confidence with which we are short and small to explore the world. Ten years later, there are more clutter and more cats. Twenty years later, many of us, who used to focus on primary schools, are now scattered all over the place. What will people and places look like in thirty years?