Jodie's Daddy Is a Garbageman (垃圾清理工)

    Mr. Swales wanted to find out what his students' parents did. He had just called Jodie when some girls laughed. Shirley shouted, “Jodie's daddy is a garbageman!”

    Everybody in the class laughed out loudly, except Jodie. She felt her face turn red.

    “Silence!” Mr. Swales said, “Being a garbageman is a difficult and useful job. We should all be grateful to Jodie's father.”

    Jodie's father came to walk her home from school as usual, but she didn't run up to him as she always did. When they got back home, Jodie went to her room and cried for a long time.

    Her father came into her room, “What happened, Jodie? Why are you so sad?”

    Jodie told her father what had happened and looked at him. He didn't seem angry or hurt. “Well,” he said, “they are right. Being a garbageman is a dirty job. Tomorrow's Saturday. Come to work with me, Jodie.”

    The place really smelt too bad. Jodie wrinkled her nose. “Don't worry, kid. In five minutes, you won't smell a thing.” said her father.

    Everybody there was working hard, and they seemed to have a good time. Jodie's father handed her a pair of gloves and told her to get the little plastic bags and throw them into the truck.

    It was fun, but also hard work. Jodie's arms soon got tired. At last, no more garbage was left and Jodie felt very happy.

    “Garbage is dirty, but when we clear it away, everything's nice and clean. You can make yourself happy only by making others happy. That's why I like being a garbageman so much.”

    Jodie gave her dirty, smelly garbageman daddy a big kiss. She said, “When I grow up, I will be a garbage-girl!”

    Now whenever someone asks Jodie what her daddy does, she says, “He's a garbageman! Everybody makes garbage, but my daddy takes it away!”

    Mary is a housewife with two 1. She is not good at 2 and it has always been the target (目标) of family jokes.

    One evening, Mary got ready for dinner a bit too 3. The kitchen started to fill with smoke and the smoke detector (烟雾报警器) went 4. 5 both of Mary's children had fire-safety 6 at school, they did not react (反应) to the alarm. Mary 7 annoyed (恼怒的). She stormed through the house in search of the two kids.

    She found 8 in the bathroom, washing their hands. Over the loud noise of the smoke alarm, she asked them 9 the sound was.

    "It's the smoke detector," they replied.

    "Do you know what that 10 means?" she asked.

    "Sure," the oldest replied. "Dinner's ready."

    A blind high school student in Shanghai became famous after getting 623 points at this year's Gaokao. The student, Wang Yun, got 127 points for Chinese, 145 for math and 144 for English. His grade was only 3 points lower than the first one in his city. And the only difference between Wang' s test and other common students' was that his was in Braille (盲文).

    After knowing the result, Wang was just as calm as before. He wasn't so excited like other common students. After Gaokao, Wang still went on learning English and history by himself. And he also went on to play the piano that he stopped for some time because of Gaokao.

    Wang became blind at an early age. But it did not stop him from living a wonderful life.

    Wang's parents, both teachers at Donghua University, sent him to a school for blind children. There he did excellent work in his study as well as sports. What was more, he was very popular in class. Because of his good grades, many other students liked to ask him questions and looked on him as their little teacher.