A Needle Picker

下午写的.好久没写过了,还晦涩....

A  Needle  Picker


  It’s half past five on a gloomy Sunday afternoon. I opened my eyes and gazed outside the bus window. Buildings and white poplars passed by quickly. Now I was on my way home after spending nearly 20 hours before the computer screen.

  Why come home? I always prefer to be the last one to leave the school dorm. I myself have no good answer to it. The freedom of doing whatever I want to do? Well, I can be a cunning multi-killer in cs_italy or de_aztec or whatever maps in the counter-strike game, I can watch the Friends or other kinds of soap operas or movies which can kill the time perfectly or I can either sleep or read all day long. Even if you study or work all day long you will finally notice that time pass by much faster than the building or white poplars outside the bus window. My twenty-fourth hit me like a tragedy, with a sense of wasted purpose and many wrong moves made. No job, no girlfriend. It’s cool to be free.

   It’s always a good thing if you can replace your strange feelings (such as sadness, craziness, loneliness) with some solid stuff. It’s better to think about people living in Palestinian or Israel: they get killed, ejected, and suffer hungry and they hate each other for a reason people don’t know.

  When I got off the bus after nearly seven hours’ journey, I was sieged by a group of motorcycles that look like a group of wolves hunger for a meal. But I preferred to walk home. The street was wet after a rain and the streetlights were dimming lonely on the sides.
   Mama was already on the balcony waiting for my back. She must be waiting there for sometime.

   All the things seemed to remain the same. The little bedroom was clean and well prepared. I knew Mama clean it for him. The bed was still making a little noise when I sat there and the picture of a football star was still on the wall beside the little wooden bed. Nothing changes.
   And then Dad came and asked how about the journey, still with a cigarette in his fingers.
  
  “It’s not bad”, I said.

   We didn’t talk much for the moment, though after a long time away from home there must be a lot of things to share with each other. We were lack of communication for a long time, and time didn’t change it a bit. I received a formal college education from a well-known university and Dad received his life experience from the college so called “society”. They often have different idea about things but I seldom argued with Dad because I knew there is no use to persuade. I preferred silence when they were about to argue. Dad was becoming a nag and complained too much, silence and go-away was the best strategy to it. Going back to my bedroom and shut the door was what I used to do. Maybe this was why I didn’t enjoy going home during school vocation. But that’s not a good reason. Anyway this is my home, a place where I spent my childhood.

    It’s not until I saw that needle picker that I felt things were changing in my home. Dad and Mama were getting old.
   
   It’s really not funny to see Dad and Mama finding a needle on the concrete floor with the help of a needle picker---that’s what Mama called it. It’s like the miner using a mine detector to find out those unknown mines. The needle picker was made from an old umbrella stick with a magnetic stone bound on the bottom side. I knew it was Dad who made it.
“Let me help you”, I said to Mama and Dad and bent down to find that tiny things. With not much effort I found it.
  “It helps a lot when you are away”, Mama smiled and put away that needle picker.
  “That’s really a good idea,” I said.
  
    Mama was in her mid fifties and Dad was in his late fifties. I felt guilty that I couldn’t remember clearly Mama and Dad’s birthday and I can hardly remember if there ever were any birthday parties in the family. It’s not our tradition to hold such a party. If there were any, it would be a good meal on my birthday.
    Mama sold her little shop in the street and now stays at home with Dad who spends most of his time playing Erhu, a traditional Chinese musical instrument. It’s time for them to enjoy the happiness of life and it’s time for me to work.
    I don’t know why that needle picker is always in my mind. Maybe everyone needs a needle picker when they cannot see clearly and everybody has a moment that he can’t see things clearly. I felt regret that I can’t be there when Mama and Dad need my help to pick up the needle for them. And sometimes when I felt depressed I think I also need such kind of help.
It came to my mind when I was back to school and having lunch with a heart-broken friend on a sunny day. Most of the time she talked about things between her and her boyfriend, who dumped her for “no good reason”. All I could do is just listening and she knew I didn’t have any good idea about their relationship. She needs a needle picker, I thought.

sunmengsi

it's a well affective essay.