Over two decades have slipped through the hourglass of time. The world has transformed dramatically, yet many shifts in my own life remain imperceptible. Though I’ve morphed from a clueless kid to a clueless adult, from ignorance to bewilderment, from conformity to eccentricity, from short to shorter, from hopelessness to hope, from hope to disappointment, from disappointment to despair, from a clean-cut boy to a nonconformist… In short, I’ve journeyed from one era to another. To put it vividly: life once glowed like a color TV but now flickers in monochrome. Human growth, it seems, marches backward as technology charges forward.
A decade ago, I knew what love was but not romance. Teachers always urged us to write essays "with heart" and "authentic feelings," a demand I never met. For instance, when tasked with writing about "my most unforgettable memory," my mind fixated on the day our family rooster—my age-mate—was sold. I cried all morning. But why cling to that rooster? I could only say he was majestic, unruly, a rebel… Yet such truths were forbidden. Once, in an essay about "the person I admire most," I praised Wei Xiaobao (the cunning protagonist of The Deer and the Cauldron), marveling at his harem of seven wives. My teacher singled out my masterpiece, paraded it before the class as a "cautionary tale," and subjected me to public critique. From then on, I learned to bury my real thoughts and instead master the art of flattery and bootlicking. To this day, I don’t lie—I simply withhold truths.
In middle school, my talents leaned toward STEM. I adored unraveling chemical equations and geometric puzzles. Yet fate laughed: in high school, I was shoved into the humanities track. Gradually, sulfuric acid and liquefaction formulas faded from my mind, classical Chinese aphorisms vanished from my tongue, and I traded lab goggles for desk-drooling naps. To this day, some textbooks still bear the watermark of my teenage lethargy.
That year, all my friends found secret crushes. Mine was the cafeteria noodle lady—a woman with a doughy frame, tangled yellowish hair, an oil-slicked complexion, and hands stained by fryer grease. Her voice boomed like a bullhorn; her temper flared like a grease fire. Yet destiny’s script is unchangeable. When my friends discovered this "secret," they began scrutinizing her too. One noodle-loving pal switched to buns overnight. When she finally left her post, I wept in my dorm for three days… while he ate cafeteria noodles for three months, sauce-stained and guilt-free.
Thus ended my youth’s weightless romance. In love’s arena, I reaped only mockery—a lesson etched in my bones. Through the rest of high school, I avoided emotional entanglements. Whether it was heartache or the ticking clock (she vanished three months before graduation), I’ll never know. All that remains is the phantom tang of cafeteria grease and the echo of a rooster’s crow—fading relics of a backward-growing life.