A lot of boys and girls in western countries are wearing the same kind of clothes, and many of them have long hair, so it is often difficult to tell whether they are boys or girls.

    One day an old man went for a walk in a park in Washington and when he was tired, he sat down on a chair by a swimming pool. A young person was standing on the other side of the pool.

    "Oh!" the old man said to the person sitting next to him. "Do you see the person with the loose clothes and long hair? Is it a boy or a girl?"

    "A girl," said his neighbor. "She is my daughter."

    "Oh!" the old man said quickly. "Please forgive me. I didn't know that you were her mother."

    "I'm not," said the person. "I'm her father."

    I' m ready to do my first jump 10 months after a skydiving (特技跳伞) accident. I can't wait! That accident almost killed (杀死) me and it made me stay in hospital for half a year. During the boring long days, I didn't feel good. "How could I live without my favourite sport?" I thought.

    It all started one evening after a nine-to-five day. I was sitting at home when an ad (广告)came on the television. "Try skydiving," it said. The next day, I went to the skydiving school in my town, At the end of the day's lessons, ] knew I found the right sport for me.

    I will never forget my first jump. Five of us walked to the runway and got into a plane. I was afraid, but the others were talking and smiling, and I started to feel a little relaxed. It was a beautiful, cloudless day and the sun was just going down. Soon it was time to jump. As I jumped from the plane, I shouted. But then everything became quiet (安静的). It was the most wonderful four minutes of my life.

    From the first jump, I was hooked. I started spending all my free time skydiving. It became my reason (理由) for living. Things were going really well. Then an accident happened on my 104th jump. I broke my both legs, right arm and nose. I stayed in hospital for six months, but I still couldn't forget skydiving.

    My mother couldn't understand why the only reason I wanted to get better was to go skydiving again. But for me, skydiving is life, and life is skydiving.

    Alan is in Class Two, Grade Seven. He is 12. His English teacher is Mr. Smith. He is English. His daughter is May. She is 13. Alan and May are good friends. They go to the same school. But they are not in the same class. They like playing sports. After class, they often play ping-pong with their friends. This is May's school ID card. Its number is 2707893. Is that Alan's school ID card?

    No, he can't find his school ID card. If you find it, please call Alan at 3462828. Thanks!

    One day, Susie was unhappy when she came home from school. "What's the matter, my dear?" asked her mother, drawing her to her side and smiling.

    "All our class must hand in compositions tomorrow. We must write 12 lines at least. But I can never write one. I'll have to go to school without a composition, for I won't copy one from a book, or ask you or papa to write one for me."

    "That's right," said her mother. "You'll be happier with a poor composition, if it's your own, than with a fine one written by somebody else. But cheer up. Run into the garden and play. I'll call you in half an hour. Don't think about your composition now. Just have a good time."

    It seemed just a few minutes to Susie before she heard her mother calling her. She went into the house immediately — her hands full of sweet flowers, and her face red with exercise.

    Then her mother asked her to sit by the window with a nice piece of paper and a pencil, and write something about what she could see. "Never mind your composition; do this to please me, and we'll talk about that later."

    Although Susie thought her mother's request was strange, she knew she always had a good reason for everything she did. So she did as her mother requested.

    As she looked out, she first saw the western sky and some bright, sunset clouds. "Oh, mother, what a sunset!"

    "Don't talk. Just write."

    The pencil began moving rapidly across the paper. She wrote about the sunset clouds, the look of the distant hills, the streets, the river, the garden with its flowers, and the birds flying past the window. She forgot all about the terrible composition!

    Just as she had reached the bottom of the page, her mother came in and said with a smile, "Well, Susie, how does that composition come on?"

    "Composition! You told me not to think about it, and I've never thought of it once. I've had such a nice time writing about what I could see from the window."

    Mrs. Smith took the paper and read what Susie had written. She said, "There, Susie, that's a very nice composition, really."

    "A composition! Is that a composition?" Susie asked in surprise.

    "Yes, my dear, and a very good one, too, if we find a title for it," replied her mother. Then she added, "I'm sure it will please your teacher, as it does me. You see, it's easy enough to write a composition if you have anything interesting to write about."

    Clara Daly was sitting on an Alaska Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles when she heard a worried voice over the loudspeaker: "Does anyone on board know American Sign Language?"

    Clara, 15 at the time, pressed the call button. An air hostess came by and explained the situation. "We have a passenger on the plane who's blind and deaf," she said. The passenger seemed to want something, but he was traveling alone and the air hostesses couldn't understand what he needed.

    Clara had been studying ASL for the past year to help blind and deaf people and she knew she'd be able to finger spell into the man's palm. So she rose from her seat, walked toward the front of the plane, and knelt by the seat of Tim Cook, then 64. Gently taking his hand, she signed, "How are you? Are you OK?" Cook asked for some water.

    When it arrived, Clara returned to her seat. She came by again a bit later because he wanted to know the time. On her third visit, she stopped and stayed for a while.

    "He didn't need anything. He was lonely and wanted to talk," Clara said.

    So for the next hour, she talked about her family and her plans for the future. Cook told Clara how he had become blind over time and shared stories of his days as a traveling salesman. Even though he couldn't see her, she "looked attentively at his face with such kindness," a passenger reported.

    "Clara was amazing," an air hostess told Alaska Airlines in an interview. "You could tell Cook was very excited to have someone he could speak to, and she was such an angel."

Cook's reply: "Best trip I've ever had."

    Mrs. Brown lives in a small village. Her husband is dead. She has a son but no daughters. His name is John and he is twenty-five. After John finishes college (大学), he gets work in a big city, New York, and he lives there. It's quite a long way from his mother's home, and she is not happy about it. But John says, "There is no good work for me in this small village, Mother, and I can get a lot of money in New York. Then I can give much to you. "

    One day Mrs. Brown is very angry. She takes a train to her son's house in New York. Then she says to him. "John, why do you never call me?"

    "But mother," John laughs (笑) and says, "You don't have a telephone."

    "No," she says, "I haven't, but you have one."