Indifference

There are two reasons for being indifferent to people: one is unavoidable; the other is complete lack of interest.

Just as I picked up my meal card and stood up to buy food, my phone in my pocket vibrated. I pulled it out and saw a local unknown number—probably that auntie dialing the wrong number again. Because numbers here are very similar and there are often scam calls, my phone frequently gets calls from strangers. The sensible ones hang up quickly. I counted silently: five, four, three, two, one. They didn’t hang up, so I answered.

“XX, it’s EH. My computer can’t connect to the internet for some reason? How do I fix it?”

Damn it, it’s you again! I thought to myself, while replying: “There are many reasons a computer can’t connect to the internet, and it’s hard for me to fix; just like audio problems, these are the two most troublesome issues. I usually just reinstall the system.” I wasn’t lying; those really are the two problems I find hardest to solve.

“Do you have time this afternoon? Come over and help me take a look, or reinstall the system for me…”

Hearing he wanted help reinstalling the system again, I got a bit anxious. Before he finished, I quickly replied: “I’m not free today, I have things to do all day.” I lied—actually, my weekend had started Friday afternoon, and I was only doing homework tomorrow; the afternoon was quite free. This urgent reply plus my tone at the time already clearly implied I wasn’t planning to help him. Afraid he still wouldn’t get it and would ask me to come tomorrow, I started thinking of using the excuse of going to driving school for the weekend to decline.

Fortunately, he either understood my meaning or couldn’t stand being offline all afternoon—in any case, he didn’t ask me to come tomorrow. I felt much relieved.

“Do you have an XP system disk? I’ll come get it,” he continued asking. Normally he should have hung up right away.

“Uh… no, I don’t use that system anymore,” I didn’t dare mention I only had Win7, lest it cause more trouble.

“Alright then, bye.”

“Bye.”

Actually, this person and I shouldn’t have crossed paths. Even now I can’t remember his name or face, but he remembered my phone number. I never expected his computer to have so many problems—I really regret giving him my number. The reason he found me was probably because he was a high school alumnus of my university classmate; they weren’t particularly close either. Last summer his computer broke, and not wanting to spend money on a professional repair, my classmate mentioned my name to him, and so he found me. At noon while eating, I had no choice but to go install the system for him on an empty stomach. After installing the system, I installed antivirus and software for him, let him install games himself. He said he’d buy me a drink, I refused—that was hinting that helping him install the system wasn’t for any benefit, and I didn’t want to make money off him. As the saying goes, an upright person doesn’t accept charity. If I helped him install the system once without any compensation, then next time he should sensibly not ask me again, out of embarrassment. And more seriously, if I had accepted that bottle of water, accepted his compensation, what would that mean? It would mean I’m someone who maintains computers for money, and from then on they could legitimately ask me to fix computer problems, dozens of yuan cheaper than a repair shop. Word spreads—one tells ten, ten tell a hundred—I couldn’t handle that. I also didn’t want to make that money; it has no real technical content and smells of freeloading. But in the end, he still dragged me out to eat, and I really couldn’t refuse. He asked for my phone number, saying if there were any problems I could call him. Taking someone’s hand makes it soft, eating someone’s food makes it soft—I reluctantly gave him the number.

Later his computer had problems intermittently. The second time I went again, handled it a bit, fixed it. Looking at all the junk on his computer, it seemed he only knew how to play games and nothing else—I had no desire to befriend him at all. Gradually I got annoyed by his various uninteresting problems. I became more and more unhappy receiving his calls. Besides, I’d already said I didn’t want to help ordinary people with computers anymore (helping Haifeng the day before yesterday doesn’t count, that number 10 forward is okay), so today I gave him a very rude reply.

Excluding unavoidable circumstances, relationships between people are that simple. If you get along, there’s something to gain, you share similar interests, or you’re interested in the opposite sex, you’ll be a bit warmer; otherwise, you’ll dig deep ditches between various relationships with indifference.