I was 15 when I walked into McCarley's bookstore in Ashland. As I was looking at all the books on the   1   , the shop owner asked if I'd like a job. I needed to start   2  money for college, so I said yes. I worked after school and during the summer for the lowest pay, and the job helped pay for my first year of college. I would do many other jobs and I   3   made maps for the US Forest Service. But selling books was one of the most satisfying.

    One day a woman asked me for books on cancer. She seemed   4  . I showed her almost everything we had at that time in the  5and found other books we could order. She left the store less  6 . I've always remembered the  7 I felt in having helped her.

    Years later, as a TV reporter in Los Angeles, I   8   a child who was born with his fingers connected(jointed together). His family could not   9   a corrective operation, and the boy lived in shame, hiding his hand in his pocket.

Luckily, I  10   persuading(说服) my boss to let me do the story. After my story was broadcast, a doctor and a nurse called,    11  to perform the operation for free.

    I visited the boy in the recovery room soon after the operation. The first thing he did was to hold up his repaired 12and say, “thank you.” I felt a sense of   13  .

    In the past, while I was at McCarley's bookstore, I always felt that I was working for the   14 , not the store. Today it's the same. NBC News pays me,   15  I feel as if I work for the TV viewers, helping them make sense of the world, not the TV station.

A

    Nick, 13, is tall and strong. He is good at running. Two weeks ago a new student came. His name is David. He is thin and short. He plays soccer well, and he can run very fast. Larry told Nick about it. Of course, Nick did not believe it.

    “Why not have a race with him?” said Larry.

    “Good idea!” said Nick. “I'll have a race with him after school.”

    After school, Nick went to the playground. He did some warm-up exercises for half an hour, and got ready for the race. He was sure that he could win it. Larry had to take part in a club activity that afternoon, so he could not watch the race between Nick and David.

    That evening Larry went to see Nick. They began to talk about the afternoon race. Nick's grandmother heard them in the next room. She came in and asked, “Which place?”

    “The second place,” answered Nick.

    His grandmother was very happy to hear that, and asked, “Which place did David win, then?”

    “The last but one.”

    Four years ago, Chinese skater Wu Dajing introduced himself to the skating world by winning a silver medal at the Sochi Olympic Winter Games. At this year's Pyeong Chang Olympics, Wu not only returned, but also made history.

    On Feb 22th, 2018, Wu won the gold medal in the men's short-track 500-meter race. He set a new world record with a time of 39.584 seconds. He also became the first Chinese man to take home an Olympic short-track gold medal. BBC said Wu's win was “flawless”, because he was much faster than all of the other skaters.

    “I didn't give them a chance and I kept my speed from the start,” he told the reporter after the match.

    But China's short-track teams didn't do well in general at the Games. Chinese skaters in the women's 500 meters, 3000-meter relay and men's 1500 meters all failed to take home the gold.  Wu was China's biggest hope, which put a lot of pressure on him. But he proved himself with his great performance.

    Wu is now known as a highly talented skater. But things were not always that way. When Wu joined the national team in 2010, he was seen as almost “nothing” compared to gifted skaters like Zhou Yang and Fan Kexin, as his coaches said at the time. Their words made him quite upset. But Wu didn't want to give up and worked as hard as he could. He practiced skating all year round. He even didn't return to his hometown for the holidays for 10 years. “I believe in myself,” he told the reporter after his match at the Olympics.

    "I'm going to make a time capsule(胶囊)," Anna told her parents at the breakfast table.

    Dad looked up from his coffee cup and smiled. "Sounds interesting."

    "Dad, I'm building a time capsule – it's like a memory box. I watched my teacher dig one up from our school yard yesterday. Some students buried(埋) the capsule thirty years ago. It had a lot of old things in it, so we could see what life was like back then."

    After breakfast, Anna looked around in the garden and found an old coffee can. What should she put in the can?

    With her cat Kitty following close behind, Anna looked through her things. She grabbed her favorite book, her yo-yo and some photos. She put them in the can. She pulled off her watch and placed it in the can too. 

    "What else should I put into it?" she asked Kitty.

    "Meow." Kitty pushed a ball toward the can.

    "Sure, Kitty, I'll include your ball." Anna put Kitty's ball in the can.

    Anna put the top on and closed the can. On the front, she wrote ANNA AND KITTY'S TIME CAPSULE and then buried it in the garden. "All done," she told Kitty.

    After a few minutes, Anna sighed. What should she do next? She couldn't yo-yo. Or read her favorite book. She'd buried those. Now, she missed them.

    "Meow." Kitty looked at her.

    "Do you miss your ball?" Anna asked. "Don't worry. I'll get it for you." So Anna dug up their time capsule.

    Kitty pounced on the ball. And Anna pulled on her watch and read her book while yo-yoing under a tree in the garden.