So my mom thought about it for a long time and found a cram school in a nearby neighborhood for me.

One class cost thirty dollars, and there were more than twenty kids in a class.

There were no foreign teachers, just one tall, skinny man teaching us from start to finish.

But I was content because I could finally understand those unfamiliar words.

When the English teacher asked questions, I could finally raise my hand to answer the questions that others couldn't answer.

I wanted to prove that I was not inferior to other kids.

In another midterm exam, I finally surpassed the second place and replaced him as the new second place.

I thought it would take a long time, but he suddenly got purpura and had to take time off school just a few days before the exam.

My mom said he got it from eating spicy snacks.

I had never eaten spicy snacks, but I knew they were the kind of food that costs five cents a bag at the school gate shops.

My mom never gave me pocket money, and all stationery and notebooks were bought in her company, right under her watchful eye.

My mom was still not satisfied with my grades, attributing my efforts to luck, saying that I was lucky to get second place.

And my goal was never to be second, but to be first.

My mom couldn't help me with my homework, so she bought a second-hand laptop from the computer city.

The laptop's battery was removed and could only be used by plugging in the power, even though it was a laptop, it was more like a desktop.

My mom told me to ask Baidu if I didn't understand, she said Baidu knows everything.

As she said, Baidu really knows everything, but it only tells me the answer, without telling me why that answer was reached.

I also came up with a way to deal with it, tracing back from the answer to the question, I could figure out why.

Computers were always a novelty, especially when classmates were discussing what games.

The dazzling and bizarre small games they talked about fascinated me.

But before I could ever play games, my mom killed that idea.

My mom's information was always faster than mine because her customers said that kids from families who bought computers didn't study well, they played games every day.

My mom struggled psychologically for a long time before she didn't pack up the computer and throw it in the trash.

She came up with a solution, setting a password for the computer and moving it from home to her store.

I had to look up information right under her nose.

Her store wasn't very big, with a hair salon outside, a beauty salon inside, and a curtain in the middle.

I was sitting on a small stool inside, dim and cramped, no sunlight could come in.

The buzzing of the clippers from outside, the snip-snap sound of scissors, and her and her customer's laughter made it hard for me to concentrate.

Some customers teased me, jokingly saying, "What are you looking up, she must be playing games, kids are all like this."

My mom would play along, saying, "Yes, that's right, hard to manage, very disobedient. Can't do anything without supervision."

I didn't respond, my mom would say I was rude and had no manners.

That night she scolded me for a long time, saying that no one else's child would be like me, not knowing how to read people, not knowing how to please customers.

She said I was hurting her business.

She cited many examples as her theoretical basis, like how a certain aunt's son would greet people with auspicious words upon meeting.

Those other kids were my control group.

My grades, my temper, and my appearance, everything had to be compared to others.

For the first time, I realized that I couldn't even control my emotions at will.

What kind of expression should I put on, what kind of words should I say, I also had to follow the lead of other people's children.