Childhood in the water

The weather has been surprisingly good these days, and the blazing sun has blinded people.

One advantage of summer in Zhangjiakou is that no matter how poisonous the sun is, it won't make people feel particularly hot. But in Chongqing's hometown, such strong sunshine will make people stay at home quietly.

Looking at the strong sunshine outside the window, although I can't feel the heat, my thoughts drift back to the hottest summer of my childhood under the guidance of the sunshine.

From the beginning of May to the end of October, the summer in Chongqing is very hot.

The only place that makes me feel cool as a child is in the water, so every summer, a group of children often go down the river in groups of three and five and swim in the weir pond.

When I was a child, my parents often told me not to swim in places where no one swims, not to swim alone, not to swim in places where no one has been, and not to swim in places where there is no safety guarantee.

However, when I was a child, there was no swimming pool, and when it was hot, I had ignored these "no" and all the exhortations.

Jianwa was my best playmate when I was a child. She tends sheep, mows grass, catches fish and shoots birds, and always goes to do business or play together. His swimming skill is much better than mine. Every time he swims to a new place, he goes into the water first and then says:

"Come down, it's okay. I saw someone swimming here the other day. "

Watching him swim comfortably, I don't care that much. As soon as I took off my clothes, I jumped directly into the water.

The earliest place to learn swimming was in the weir pond in our yard.

The administrative villages in my hometown are different from those in the north. In this ancient village, people live in scattered places. Seven or eight families, more than a dozen families live in a relatively close yard. Houses are built on mountains, and they never pay attention to the rule of sitting facing south. Every yard has a name, such as Zhoujiagou, Wujiawan, Li Jiawan and so on.

My family lives in Zhoujiagou. When I was a child 10 many families, none of them was surnamed Zhou. When I was a child, I also asked the old people why there was no Zhou in the courtyard, but Zhou Jiagou. The old man told me that the earliest landlord was surnamed Zhou, and everyone who lived here rented his land to farm.

It turns out that the boss's surname is Zhou, so it's called Zhoujiagou. But that era has long passed, leaving only this place name.

That is beside the point. Let's go on swimming.

According to my parents, the weir pond in Zhoujiagou was built in a unified way during the period of great collective. The weir pond covers an area of more than 30 mu, and its main function is to rescue and fight drought. Usually, the deepest part of the water is more than 2 meters, and there are many fish in it, all of which grow naturally. The water circulates naturally and is particularly clear.

Deep in my memory, this pool of clear water is the coolest place in summer. When it's too hot, roll up your trouser legs, stand barefoot in the water, hold a handful of clear water, and let it flow freely from head to face. This coolness from the outside to the inside, from the heart to the outside, will make you shout "Oh, it's so cold!" "

Especially in the season of harvesting wheat, corn and rice, I have worked in the field for a day and there is a lot of dust on my body. Adults like to stand by and watch the water in the weir pond, while washing dust and chatting, and experience this cool feeling.

This mode of chatting while washing can make them stand in the water for a long time, and often say, "Oh, it's so cool here that they don't want to move."

Adults stand by and wash, but boys don't. They all took off their clothes and jumped down. Children, adults should pull a little. Older children have the courage to go to the middle point because the weir pond can't be flooded at all. They know how deep the weir pond in their yard is, and their children can enjoy the happiness in the water under the eyes of adults.

Children play with water for the first time under the guidance of adults, experience the clarity and happiness in the water, and their desire to play with water will grow.

The fun of being in the water as a child is like this smart phone in the hands of children now. I used to wonder if the person who invented the word "surfing the Internet" was inspired by being cool in the water when he was a child.

Sneaking down the weir pond to play with water, just like children surfing the internet secretly now, will be addictive.

In summer, Jianwa and I would steal the weir pond for a while almost every day. My parents stared closely, afraid of drowning, but it was useless to say anything. They accidentally slipped out the back door.

There was no money to buy swimming rings at that time. It's the first time to steal weir pond to play with water, and I'm a little scared. Holding hands, we slowly walked into the chest-high water, afraid to leave, and turned and fluttered back and forth to the shore. But after a long time, I became familiar with the topography of the weir pond. I know that the bottom of the weir pond is gradually inclined from the side to the middle. I know where the water is deep and where the water is shallow, so I am more and more open.

There is a family near the weir pond, and the male owner is good at swimming. Sometimes he sees us playing in the water and often gives us advice and teaches us how to swim.

He asked us to take off his trousers, soak them in water first, tear off a piece of mulberry to tie the cuffs of his trousers, grab the waistband for air, tie the waistband with another piece of mulberry, and immediately put them into the water. The air in his pants is buoyant, just like a simple life buoy. Lift his chin and practice "dog planing" with both hands. We really did it. It was fun, but we just insisted.

Now that children are learning to swim in the swimming pool, the coach asks them to buy airbags and rafting boards. In fact, the principle of inflating trousers is the same as that of our childhood, but the method of childhood is relatively simple.

However, we soon found that this simple method was not suitable for us, because we had no pants to wear when we came out of the water, and we had to dry them first. If adults find themselves playing in the weir pond privately, they can't escape at all.

Sometimes when I am having fun in the water, I will hear my sister calling my name from a distance and know that my mother must have sent her to find me. Without saying anything, I immediately went ashore and hid in the bamboo forest near the weir pond for a while. When she sees no one in the weir pond, she will look away. After he left, she would immediately run back to the mountains with her clothes.

When we get to the back hill, we will pretend to agree. When she asked why, she replied that we caught cicadas in the back hill. In fact, the hair is still wet. When the nail is scratched on the arm, the soaked skin turns white immediately, and she can't fool her at all. It is because she is in a bad mood that she doesn't report it, so my sister often threatens me to help her.

Parents often catch themselves taking a bath in the weir pond. They always go to the scene to arrest people quietly, and every time they are caught, they are inevitably beaten.

But the coolness and fun in the water soon covered up my scruples and quickly erased the severe pain of mulberry stripes on my legs.

After being beaten, I can't manage it for two days, and I will repeat the story of the day before yesterday.

Later, the adults couldn't help it, but they were really afraid that we would be flooded, so they cut down a few bamboos and threw them into the weir pond. A bamboo tree is so buoyant in the water that two or three people will not sink when standing on it, just like the lane sign in the swimming pool now. When you are tired, you can lie on it and have a rest. That's great.

The day when we discovered the secret was the happiest time we spent in the water.

Swimming is like riding a bike. It will be natural if you play too much. Suddenly one day, I found that I could swim a few meters with the "dog planing". Slowly, I learned other postures, and I swam farther and farther. Sometimes when adults catch us again, they will show off in front of them, which means to reassure them that we will not drown.

It's no use showing off. You will be beaten if you bathe under the weir. When I was a child, my parents didn't pass it on, so long as they didn't listen, it completely violated the modern educational concept, but there was no way. Childhood is such an environment. In our yard, there are no children who are not beaten by their parents.

Nowadays, adults are very good at preaching, and children are rarely beaten, so once beaten, children feel unbearable and incomprehensible.

With the progress of society, the concept of education is also progressing, and the ancestral "secret recipe" of education is useless at all.

I learned to swim, and my skills are getting better and better. I am even more unscrupulous, diving, diving and catching fish. I'm getting more and more courageous. I often take children from other yards to other ponds, reservoirs and rivers. Because there are many people, I have more fun.

Seeing that my son is sometimes disobedient and thinking that he was naughty when he was a child, I am very relieved.

This is also a blessing from God. I've always been lucky. Nothing has ever happened between me and Jianwa.

Until one day when I was in the first grade of junior high school, a classmate of the same grade went swimming in the reservoir after school and was drowned. Seeing my parents come to school heartbroken, my heart suddenly became a little afraid of Tang Wei, reservoirs and rivers. Since then, I seldom go swimming in other places.

Now that I think about it, I'm glad I didn't have an accident. So I let my child learn to swim in the swimming pool early, and often tell him that it is really dangerous not to swim in strange waters in a regular swimming pool if you want to play with water.