Chapter 87 Talk Show Actor "As if sitting on pins and needles," "Like a thorn in the back," and "Like a fishnet in the throat." Jiang He experienced the full weight of these three words that day.
She seriously doubted that even if 10 or 20 years passed, even if she was old and dying, she would still regret what happened that day and slap herself twice.
Li Tao smiled and said it didn't matter. She was obviously used to similar misunderstandings, but Jiang He felt even more ashamed and wanted to find a crack in the ground to get into trouble.
"I smashed your headlight, and you misunderstood my husband. One-on-one, let's draw. If you really feel bad about it, you can give us a big discount next time. Isn't that okay?"
Li Tao thoughtfully laid the steps for Jiang He, and Jiang He immediately agreed, "Of course it's no problem, that's for sure."
"That's great. In this case, you sit down for a while and I'll change my clothes. I'll be out soon."
Li Tao said, grabbing her poncho in one hand and her shoes in the other, and rushed into the bathroom.
Jiang He sat on the sofa in the living room with some restraint. She tried to observe the surrounding environment to determine the reason why Xiong Yunhao was paralyzed at a young age, but found nothing.
She saw neither baskets nor boxes of medicines, nor medical equipment such as wheelchairs and crutches. The living room in front of her was no different from that of an ordinary family of three, and it was even cleaner.
Jiang He simply stopped embarrassing herself. She took out the agreement and questionnaire from her bag and put them aside. With her peripheral vision, she glanced at the table next to her and found a photo on it, which was a family portrait of Li Tao's family.
In the photo, a family of three are wearing simple white T-shirts and blue jeans. Xiong Yunhao's right hand is resting on Li Tao's shoulder. A little girl who looks like three or four years old is holding a little golden retriever, which is only half a year old at most, and is sitting on it. On my parents’ laps.
The three people smiled happily and naturally at the camera, even the corners of their mouths were raised in the same arc.
"Your daughter looks so much like you."
Just as Li Tao brought out a pot of hot scented tea, Jiang He immediately said, the little girl in the photo is exactly a scaled-down version of Li Tao.
"This was taken the year before last, and now Duoduo looks more like her dad."
Li Tao poured a cup of tea for Jiang He as he spoke. Jiang He thanked him and handed over the agreement. He picked up the questionnaire and silently considered what to say for a while.
Asking family members about the old man's physical condition is really not a big psychological burden for Jiang He.
But when asking a wife about why her 37-year-old paralyzed husband, who was clearly in his prime but unfortunately suffered from this misfortune, Jiang He was really hesitant and didn't know where to start.
Jiang He sipped the scented tea one after another, and the tip of the pen poked the lower right corner of the questionnaire again and again. The questionnaire was almost broken by her, and the scented tea was about to bottom out, but she still didn't think about it. How to say it.
She put the glass back on the coffee table, and suddenly found that the door to a room was closed. She immediately remembered what Li Tao had specially told her before, "Don't knock on the door."
"Is Mr. Xiong resting?"
"No, he is creating." Li Tao looked down at the agreement and said with a smile.
"Creating? Is it writing a novel?"
Jiang He knows that many people with limited mobility now write novels online, which can not only express themselves but also make money, killing two birds with one stone.
"No, he writes scripts, talk show scripts." Li Tao's eyes flashed with obvious appreciation and love, "Our old Xiong is a talk show actor."
"Oh, that's amazing!" Jiang He instantly imagined the image of Xiong Yunhao sitting in an electric wheelchair, holding a microphone and giving a talk show, making hundreds of people in the audience laugh in unison.
This cannot be described by the word "inspirational", and even "great" is not an exaggeration.
"Which theater is Mr. Xiong performing in? Is it Elephant or Xituo? I must go see one!" Jiang He asked curiously.
In the past two or three years, more and more people like talk shows, especially young people. For a while, Lin Xiaoya wanted to go to various talk show theaters every day to check in. She worked harder than playing scripts. She met her ex-boyfriend at the Elephant Talk Show Theater. of.
"Now...now I can't see."
Li Tao closed the agreement and seemed a little apologetic for discouraging Jiang He. "He has ALS and can no longer perform on stage."
Jiang He pinched her thigh, and she tried hard to control herself, not wanting her face to show too much shock, regret or pity.
Jiang He felt that he should have succeeded, at least Li Tao's face did not show the expression of being stabbed.
"But Lao Xiong is really from the Elephant Theater."
Li Tao took the initiative to talk about her past with Xiong Yunhao, "I first met him at the Elephant Theater. He was a part-time actor at the time. As for me, I happened to have a friend who liked this very much, so he took me there every day. . In fact, not many people watched talk shows at that time, it was still quite niche."
"We got to know each other after going back and forth, and found that we quite hit it off, so we got together. As you know, the talk show suddenly became popular and the Elephant Theater began to make money, so Lao Xiong simply resigned and devoted himself to talk talk. As a show actor, at that time, he would draw cakes for me every day and said that when he became popular, he would let me eat soft rice. Look, it was all carbohydrates and no high-quality protein at all."
Jiang He couldn't help laughing when he heard this. Li Tao's slow narration sounded very comfortable and attractive. Jiang He felt that his attention was being dragged into her hand, and his mood fluctuated accordingly.
"Sounds pretty plain, right? I thought at the time that my life would always be so plain. But life is full of surprises and surprises. If you want to be plain, it has to give you some twists and turns, and it likes to take things by surprise."
Li Tao's tone was relaxed and her expression was natural, but to Jiang He, every word felt as heavy as a mountain.
"The early symptoms of ALS are not obvious and difficult to detect at all. Thinking about it now, the earliest symptoms appeared was when Lao Xiong participated in the open mic for the first time. He suddenly started to speak loudly while talking on the stage, but soon He recovered again. I thought he was improvising at the time, and the audience in the audience also thought so. The performance even gained points because of it. It was an unprecedented success. Everyone felt that Lao Xiong was successful."
The smile on Li Tao's face suddenly distorted, just like a computer screen flashing. She recovered very quickly, even speaking without any lag. If Jiang He hadn't been looking at her, he would definitely not have noticed.
Although the doctor told Li Tao more than once that it would be difficult to diagnose ALS even if he sought medical treatment immediately, this matter still became a knot in Li Tao's mind.
"When Lao Xiong came off the stage that day, he was sweating profusely. He told me that his tongue suddenly became difficult to use. I thought he was too nervous at the time, so I laughed at him."
Li Tao smiled and shook her head as she spoke, "In the later performances, Lao Xiong even used a 'big tongue' on purpose, and the effect was pretty good. We all agreed at the time that we could design the 'big tongue' as part of Lao Xiong's performance. Characteristic, I even thought that the good days of eating carbohydrates every day might really be coming... I never thought that something would happen to the old bear."
On November 2021, 11, Li Tao felt that she would remember this day forever.
Taking this as a node, the days before were as smooth as the concentrate extracted by a top-notch coffee machine, rich in oil and mellow in taste, but the days after were as chaotic as inferior non-dairy milk tea brewed with cold water, and each sip was more difficult to drink. Swallow down.
(End of this chapter)