Chapter 83: Regrets of a Young Man
For Lin Mingyang's performance at the Emmy Awards, the Hollywood media to positive comments mostly, after all, the winners of the award can be as unique as Lin Mingyang so few guys, and the mainstream culture of the United States tends to focus on individuality and independence. Of course, there are exceptions to everything, and Lin Mingyang's agent, Eckles, is one of them.
"Why do I feel like your acceptance speech was like issuing a will, even using your own epitaph!"
"Isn't it true that people live towards death?" Lin Ming Yang had long gotten used to Ecks' sarcastic accent, "Besides, when I came to this world, I never intended to go back alive!"
"Your outlook on life is also too gray, it seems like you should do a few more comedies!" Ecks shook his head, "Life is a very long journey, all we can do is try not to have regrets."
"So do you have regrets?"
"Of course!" Ecks didn't hear the otherworldly meaning in Lin Ming Yang's words, "Everyone has regrets, that's why I said 'try to' instead of 'absolutely', please note the difference between these two words! "
"Are you teaching a screenwriter how to use vocabulary?"
"I'm just trying to emphasize the difference!"
"Tell me, what kind of regrets did you have when you were my age?" Lin Mingyang didn't focus on his own faults, this unusual behavior made Ecks wary, he felt that this kid was "setting himself up".
"This is my personal privacy!"
"Think of it as using your own life experience to educate teenagers like me, the experiences summarized by previous generations are always worth learning from!" Lin Mingyang found a beautiful reason.
"I don't like reminiscing because that would make me feel like I'm slowly growing old!"
"Reminiscing is not a sign that one is getting old, reminiscing over and over again is!"
"Are you sure you want to hear it?" Ecks looked at him with suspicion.
"Why not?"
"Well, for example, in my high school, if I had studied harder back then, maybe I could have applied to a university in the Ivy League, like Princeton, Yale or Harvard, and after graduation, I would have successfully entered the elite class of American society, and maybe Clinton and Bush Jr. would have been my alumni; or maybe Bill Gates would have been my former classmate...I'm saying all of this really to tell you that a good college will probably change your future!"
Lin Mingyang was not only not persuaded, but also immediately found a counter-example: "Jack Welch went to an ordinary state university, but he is now the world's most successful CEO. even he himself admitted that if he had chosen MIT, he would have been squeezed by his former partners, and it would have been hard for him to get ahead. It was the smaller state university that gave him much of his confidence. All management revolves around confidence, and success in life is no different."
"Let me give you a heads up then, never become obsessed with finding lessons from reading biographies of successful people, most of these stories are packaged in such a way that many of the important facts will not be told to you. In Bill Gates' book, for example, he won't tell you that his mother was a director of IBM and that she was the one who made Gates' first big deal happen. Warren Buffett's book will only tell you that he visited the New York Stock Exchange when he was eight years old, but won't tell you that his father, who is a member of Congress, took him there, and that it was a director of Goldman Sachs who was in charge of hospitality at the time."
"Okay, tell me about your other regrets, like relationships!"
"The relationships of my high school days have no relevance to young people today." Ecks flatly refused.
"Like your first girlfriend, or the girl you once had a crush on but never had the courage to confess?" Lin Ming Yang didn't have the slightest intention of being ready to give up on this topic.
"Felix, this isn't writing a script, those romantic stories in your head aren't something everyone can have a similar experience with in reality!" Ecks recognized Lin Ming Yang's intentions as he realized that from the very beginning this guy was constantly changing the topic, and what Ecks wanted to talk to Lin Ming Yang about today was about hiring a tutor for him.
"Entrusted by your mother, I've got information on all the famous tutors in the city for you, you have to pick one!"
"It even comes with a life photo, Ecks you know me too well!" Lin Ming Yang flipped through the thick resume, first feeling very surprised, but after flipping through most of it, the expression on his face became more and more ugly, "Why are they all uncles and aunts? Is this also my mother's request?"
"Ms. Catherine set the lower age limit for the screening criteria at 35, she thought it would ensure that the teachers she found would have a lot of teaching experience." Ecks nodded helplessly, "This dossier was designed in your preferred format, and it took a lot of effort to find their life photos. Hollywood's big directors like to go through the candidates' profiles like this when picking actors, and finally determine the right person, this kind of treatment lets you enjoy it in advance!"
Lin Ming Yang complained, "If you have extra energy, why don't you help me make another movie!"
"I'm sorry, that's impossible!" There was no room for negotiation in Ecks' tone.
"Don't you really have any regrets from your high school days?" Lin Mingyang threw the information in his hand towards one side, then flipped open the laptop on the table, clicking on the browser before typing in Ecks' name in the search options, "Let me check!"
A row of search results appeared on the webpage, and Lin Ming Yang clicked on the very first one and read, "Born in 1973 in Madillon, Arkansas, attended Falco Public High School at the age of fifteen... er, I must say that the name of this school you went to is really cool (Harmonized FUCK)"
"You googled me!" Ecks put down his coffee cup in a bit of a panic and tried to close the laptop, but was stopped by Lin Ming Yang, "Oh my god, you actually repeated a grade, and then you're still the school's American soccer star!"
"That's because the damn school wanted me to help them win the weekly championship for one more season, so they tampered with my test scores!" Ecks hastily explained.
"Maybe it's because my imagination isn't enough, I can't see any American soccer players from your current body type!" Lin Ming Yang "pitifully" looked at Ecks' bulging belly, "It seems like you haven't participated in physical exercise for a long time, look, there's actually a picture of you from back then here!"
He clicked on the link to the picture, it was a group photo of the high school American soccer league champions, after searching for half a day, Lin Ming Yang was able to vaguely make out Ecks' appearance from the face of the handsome young man standing in the back row of the team on the right side of the center, "Oh my god, is this you?"
"Back then, I was the most popular athlete in school with the girls!" Talking about his glorious past, Ecks' face was filled with pride.
"The Prince Charming in school back then is still a poor bachelor now!" Lin Ming Yang sighed somewhat sadly, his eyes lingered on that photo for a while, and suddenly made a new discovery, "Ecks, who is that beautiful woman in the photo?"
Ecks' face suddenly became unnatural, "She... she's my classmate!"
"Really a classmate?" Ecks' expression naturally didn't hide from Lin Ming Yang's eyes, he took another closer look at the smiling woman on the picture photo, "This classmate of yours doesn't look too young, in order to be able to stand with you guys before, I think she stayed back for at least 3 grades, and I'd like to ask, has she graduated from high school now?"
"It's..." said Ecks, winding himself up.
"Oops, how could I forget, there's a small line of text underneath the photo, it seems like a string of names, the picture shown online was too small, I downloaded it and enlarged it to see!" Lin Ming Yang rubbed his hands together, his expression looked excited.
The exasperated Ecks directly pounced on the laptop's power supply, only after he unplugged it did he realize that he had done something stupid, that plaything could use batteries. Lin Ming Yang glared at him with contempt and continued to fiddle with that picture.
"Turn off your damn machine, I'll tell you all about it!" Ecks covered his face and sat back on the sofa disheveled.
Lin Mingyang didn't continue to irritate his agent as he made a cup of coffee for Ecks. "During the Qing Dynasty in China, there was another very famous man of letters called Pu Songling, who used to offer free tea to people at intersections, and all the tea drinkers had to do was to will a story to him. He gathered material for his novels by doing this."
"And now the tea has turned into coffee?" Ecks seemed to have made some sort of determination, "Cut the crap, I can tell you the story, but the rest is off the table!"
Lin Ming Yang pulled out a black shell notebook from under the seat cushion of the sofa, it was prepared to facilitate the recording of inspirations that popped up in his head, there were a lot of interesting things recorded on it, it was a pity that Ecks couldn't read anything because all that was written on it was in Chinese. "Well, then you can start now!"
"Her's is Martha, she was my principal back in high school!"
"Young female principal, handsome American soccer player!" Lin Mingyang expertly placed two keywords right on his notebook, then pulled a horizontal line symbolizing a relationship between the two and put a question mark on it, "Nothing happened between you two?"
"I told you, this isn't writing a viciously sappy drama!" Ecks protested.
Lin Mingyang made an inviting gesture, "Alright, I promise not to interrupt again!"
"She's younger than you can imagine, she's only five years older than me!" A look of reminiscence appeared on Ecks' face.
"It wouldn't be her that made you repeat a grade, would it?" After Lin Mingyang couldn't help but interject, he himself self-consciously blocked his mouth with his hand, signaling Ecks to continue.
"At first she was just the assistant principal, but during that time the real principal had a car accident, so she temporarily acted as the school's day-to-day affairs... For such an arrangement, a lot of people in the school at the time didn't agree with it, but I just felt that she would definitely be able to do it, because she was so charming when she smiled..."
"Ahem!" Lin Ming Yang coughed, reminding Ecks, who was starting to get a little florid, not to go off topic.
"The real reason I stayed in school was that my studies sucked and none of the universities accepted my application, I could stay in school in the form of repeating the year because they saw my performance on the playing field, and I was hoping that by participating in the high school tournament for one more year, I'd get some college coach to discover me. At the lowest point in my life, Martha came along and selflessly offered me a lot of help, and that's when my academic performance slowly got better, and we ended up winning the high school league championship, and I applied for acceptance to New York University on the strength of my grades."
Lin Mingyang didn't say anything, but handed Ecks a box of tissues.
"What are you doing?" Ecks was confused by his inexplicable move.
"I've already had a feeling that the story will end in a tragedy, so I'm preparing you in advance!"
"Thanks!" Originally, Ecks' emotions hadn't changed much, but when Lin Ming Yang said this, he couldn't help but draw one out and blow his nose hard, "I was full of hope and ready to tell her the good news, but in the principal's office, I realized that she was passionately kissing another young male teacher in the school. In that moment, the whole world collapsed around me. It was my pure first love, and the incident hit me so hard that I haven't touched American soccer since then because I didn't want to conjure up painful memories for myself."
"I'm so sorry!" Lin Ming Yang patted Ecks on the shoulder, "But technically speaking, that one of yours can only be considered unrequited love!"
"Whatever you say!"
"If it was me at that time, do you know what I would have done?" Lin Mingyang began a role simulation, pretending to be Ecks, "I would have kicked the door open, then beat up that cross-eyed guy, and finally exposed his scandalous affair of seducing other female teachers in front of Martha. The anguished Martha realizes she's been cheated on and is in pain, and then I'll bravely confess my love to her and she throws herself into my arms and cries out in pain! I even have a line in mind, 'Hey, beautiful, do you need me to lend you a shoulder?"
"How do you know that male teacher is a womanizer?" Ecks asked in surprise after watching his "performance".
"I guessed!" Lin Mingyang sipped his water, "Usually those promiscuous dramas like to act like this!"
"I also learned about this later from my classmates, that darn guy cheated away Martha's heart and then fooled around with other women behind her back, not long after the two got married, Martha broke up with him!" Ecks explained painfully.
"You still can't get over her to this day?" A possibility came to Lin Ming Yang's mind, "So she's still at that school now?"
"Martha is now the official principal of Fako High School!" Ecks knew seemingly a lot more, "The first thing she did after taking office was to kick her ex-husband out of the school!"
"According to what you just said, that Martha of yours would be 35 now, the prime of her life, has she since gotten married?"
"How should I know?" Ecks spread his hands helplessly, "I haven't been in contact with her for a long time, and all the news came from others."
The corner of Lin Mingyang's mouth raised in an unseen smile:
"I have a good plan!"