My friend (Sabin)

Sabin is a nobody, living in a small town in my province and taking a job for the local government. He is my best friend in junior high school. I have not seen him for about 10 years and hadn’t talked to him on the phone for 10 years until a minute ago. I have to write about him. I started the friend blog to understand my present, but as I dig deep, I realize that something in my past needed to be unlocked before I could understand my present. The writing is no longer a therapy for me. After some time, I couldn’t be healthier as I can tell. However, I also know some stories need to be told before they get lost in the river called memory. I should be the one to write them up.

As I have said, Sabin is my best friend in junior high school. I forget what exactly made us good friends, but here is my guess. I was a nerd back then: short, thin, nerdy, timid, conventional and never standing out. Girls probably never gave a peek to me unless they had some math questions to ask. Boys bullied me, not too much though. As my grades ranked on the top, I basically got my respect from there.

Sabin came from another town 8 hours away by bus. He came here because his dad ran a construction team that happened to have a project in my city. As an outsider, he is also not well received by students who could win popularity contest. More importantly, since he was from a small rural village, he did not seem to understand the politics among young students.

That’s partly the reason why we became best friends. It is mutually beneficial. For me, I got some sincere respect and full embracement of a friend. I got to blab that I had a friend back in school. For him, he got a crack on the network of city kids, and somehow he was also close to unlock a mind that was able to achieve on the top of the class rank. The above is the reconstruction of the history. I am not exactly sure how much of it is reality and how much by my making-up.

I almost forgot all the stories back in junior high school. Probably life was predictably boring back then. However, I remember one trip during my high school. Then he went back to his hometown with his dad. He stayed in the construction field. I took a longest trip in my life then. I remember that I got car-sick even after taking some car-sick pills. I tried my best to lie down, with a wet towel on my head. Every time we passed an inspection point, we had to hide our heads low. Obviously, the bus was overloaded, and keeping our head low helped the driver avoid some road hassles.

Finally, I arrived at the construction field. They treated me well. We did not do much, except just hanging out and playing with the kids there. One night, Sabin had a night shift (It seemed that his father ran out of people for shifts, so his son became a perfect candidate). I volunteered to take the shift too. They said no, but I managed to wake up around 2am and followed my friend. The sky was clear, full of stars. It was summer, so I did not feel too cold. Sabin knew a little bit of constellation, so we tried to recognize which stars belonged to which constellation. Sabin boasted about a telescope that his father’s team had. At night, the work never stopped. The building in construction had about 10 stories already. Workers made jokes, loud enough for people in the bottom and on the top to hear. We picked up some small pebbles from the field and threw them for fun. I could not remember whether I pissed on the field too.

That was a fun night. In the following days, we visited “Yandang” mountain. But I cannot remember much. The only thing is that we took a photo there, and I remember this because I had the photo in my possession.

That is the last time I saw Sabin. More than ten years passed. A minute ago, I called him. He was married last year, and would have a baby next year. His father is still working, but no longer has the amazing energy that used to impress me. His handsome little brother grew up too and graduated from college. His brother got into a car accident last year and hurt his legs. The legs almost recovered by now, but during the time of healing, he got quite fat. Sabin got a job in local tax bureau, and passed the civil-servant exam with a number one ranking in his town. He said he was impressed by how far I had gone after we departed: first a famous college in China, and then a famous university in the States. The praise was so sincere that I did not feel any embarrassment.

Anyway, that’s Sabin. Sometimes I tried to have a strong ending for my blog. But for him, I guess this simple finishing sentence is enough. Hope to see you again, my friend.