I'm seventeen. I had worked as a box boy at a supermarket in Los Angeles. People came to the counter and you put things in their bags for them and carried things to their cars. It was hard work.

While working, you wear a plate with your name on it. I once met someone I knew years ago. I remembered his name and said, "Mr. Castle, how are you?" We talked about this and that. As he left, he said, "It was nice talking to you, Brett." I felt great, he remembered me. Then I looked down at my name plate. Oh, no. He didn't remember me at all. He just read the name plate. I wish I had put "Irving" down on my name plate. If he'd have said, "Oh yes, Irving, how could I forget you?" I'd have been ready for him. There's nothing personal here.

The manager and everyone else who were a step above the box boys often shouted orders. One of these was: you couldn't accept tips. Okay, I'm outside and I put the bags in the car. For a lot of people, the natural reaction is to take a quarter and give it to me. I'd say, "I'm sorry, I can't." They'd get angry. When you give someone a tip, you're sort of being polite. You take a quarter and you put it in their hand and you expect them to say, "Oh, thanks a lot." When you say, "I'm sorry, I can't." they feel a little put down. They say, "No one will know." And they put it in your pocket. You say, "I really can't."

It gets to a point where you almost have to hurt a person physically to prevent him from tipping you. It was not in agreement with the store's belief in being friendly. Accepting tips was a friendly thing and made the customer feel good. I just couldn't understand the strangeness of some people's ideas. One lady actually put it in my pocket, got in the car, and drove away. I would have had to throw the quarter at her or eaten it or something.

    I had decided that one year was enough. Some people needed the job to stay alive and fed. I guess I had the means and could afford to hate it and give it up.

    As a young boy, I sometimes traveled the country roads with my dad. He was a rural mill carrier, and on Saturdays he would ask me to go with him. Driving through the countryside was always an adventure: There were animals to see, people to visit, and chocolate cookies if you knew where to stop, and Dad did.

    In the spring, Dad delivered boxes full of baby chickens, and when 1 was a boy it was such a fun to stick your finger 'through one of the holes of the boxes and let the baby birds peck on your fingers.

    On Dad' s final day of work, it took him well into the evening to complete his rounds because at least one member from each family was waiting at their mailbox to thank him for his friendship and his years of service. "Two hundred and nineteen mailboxes on my route." he used to say, "and a story at every one. " One lady had no mailbox, so Dad took the mail in to her every day because she was nearly blind. Once inside, he read her mail and helped her pay her bills.

Mailboxes were sometimes used for things other than mail. One note left in a mailbox read. "Nat, take these eggs to Marian; she's baking a cake and doesn't have any eggs. " Mailboxes might be buried in the snow, or broken, or lying on the groom:. bat the mail was always delivered On cold days Dad might find one of his customers waiting for him with a cup of hot chocolate. A young wrote letters but had no stamps, so she left a few button on the envelope in the mailbox; Dad paid for the stamps. One businessman used to leave large amounts of cash in his mailbox for Dad to take to the bank. Once, the amount came to 8 32,000.

    A dozen years ago, when I traveled back to my hometown on the sad occasion of Dad's death,  the mailboxes along the way reminded me of some of his stories. I thought I knew them all, but that wasn't the case.

    As I drove home, I noticed two lamp poles, one on each side of the street. When my dad was around, those poles supported wooden boxes about four feet off the ground. One box was painted green and the other was red, and each had a long narrow hole at the top with white lettering: SANTA CLAUS, NORTH POLE. For years children had dropped letters to Santa through those holes.

    I made a turn at the comer and drove past the post office and across the railroad tracks to our house. Mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table when I heard footsteps. There, at the door, stood Frank Townsend, Dad's postmaster and great friend for many years. So we all sat down at the table and began to tell stories.

    At one point Frank looked at me with tears in his eyes. " What are we going to do about the letters this Christmas?" he asked.

    "The letters?"

    'I guess you never knew. "

    "Knew what?"

    " Remember, when you were a kid and you used to put your letters to Santa in those green and red boxes on Main Street? It was your dad who answered all those letters every year. "

    I just sat there with tears in my eyes. It wasn't hard for me to imagine Dad sitting at the old table in our basement reading those letters and answering each one. I have since spoken with several of the people who received Christmas letters during their childhood, and they told me how amazed they were that Santa had known so much about their homes and families.

For me, just knowing that story about my father was the gift of a lifetime.

    Yellowstone National Park.☞文章内容an easy day hike or boat trip can turn into a battle for survival.

    Grown-ups are often surprised by how well they remember something they learned as children but have never practiced ever since. A man who has not had a chance to go swimming for years can still swim as well as ever when he gets back in the water. He can get on a bicycle after many years and still ride away. A mother who has not thought about the words for years can teach her daughter the poem that begins "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" or remember the story of Cinderella or Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

    One explanation is the law of overlearning, which can be stated as follows: Once we have learned something, extra learning attempts or tries to increase the length of time we will remember it.

    In childhood we usually continue to practice such skills as swimming, and bicycle riding long after we have learned them. We continue to listen to and remind ourselves of words such as "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" and childhood tales such as Cinderella and Goldilocks. We not only learn but overlearn.

    The multiplication tables(乘法口诀表) are an exception（例外） to the general rule that we forget rather quickly the things that we learn in school, because they are another of the things we overlearn in childhood.

    The law of overlearning explains why cramming(突击学习)for an examination, though it may result in a passing grade, is not a satisfactory way to learn a college course. By cramming, a student may learn the subject well enough to pass the examination, but he is likely soon to forget almost everything he learned. A little overlearning, on the other hand, is really necessary for one's future development.

     Stephen Hawking is perhaps the world's most famous living physicist. To the public, he's best known as an author of bestsellers such as The Universe in a Nutshell and A Brief History of Time, which have brought an appreciation of theoretical (理论上的)  physics to millions. He is regarded as having one of the brightest minds on the planet. But outstanding astrophysicist (天体物理学家) Stephen Hawking has admitted that he did not learn to read until he was eight years old.

    In a public lecture at the Royal Albert Hall, Professor Hawking also admitted that he was not active in studying while at Oxford University, where he studied physics, and that only the news that he might die young from motor neurone (运动神经元) disease made him focus on his work.

    Professor Hawking said, “My sister Philippa could read by the age of 4 but then she was brighter than me.” He said that he was common at school and was never further than halfway up his class. “My classwork was very untidy, and my handwriting was very bad in the teachers' eyes,” he said. “But my classmates gave me the name Einstein, so probably they saw signs of something better.”

    But he said that it was when doctors told him that he probably only had a few years to live at the age of 21 that he began to focus on his work, which resulted in some of his early achievements. He said, “When you are faced with the possibility of an early death, it makes you realize that life is worth living and there are lots of things you want to do.” Hawking serves as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, where he continues to contribute to both high-level physics and the popular understanding of our universe.

    Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

    Where: Becket, Massachusetts

    When: June 15-Aug. 24

    Each summer, this influential dance center presents a number of classes and performances by more than 50 companies from around the world. Highlights(精彩的部分) this season include the Dance Theater of Harlem's production of Alvin Ailey's “The Lark Ascending”, which opens the festival.

    Many events are free. Ticketed performances start at $22.

    Moab Music Festival

    Where: Moab, Utah

    When: Aug. 29-Sep. 9

    This area is better known for mountain biking than for music. But since 1992, it has hosted a private festival that brings classical, jazz, Latin and other types of music to the land. This year there will be 16 concerts, including three “Grotto Concerts”, where guests take a 45-minute boat ride down the Colorado River to performances.

    Events start at $25.

    Cheyenne Frontier Days

    Where: Cheyenne, Wyoming

    When: July 19-28

    There's something for everyone at this 117-year-old festival, from an “Indian village” and Old West museum to country concerts. But the competition is still the main attraction, with cowboys(牛仔) and cowgirls competing for major money in the world's largest outdoor stage.

    Competition tickets start at $18, and concert tickets at $23.

    The Glimmerglass Festival

    Where: Cooperstown, New York

    When: July 6-Aug. 24

    Each summer, opera lovers from around the country (and the world) travel to upstate New York to watch productions that include stars like Nathan Gunn and Ginger Costa-Jackson. This year's performances include Wagner's “The Flying Dutchman” and Verdi's “King for a Day”, in honor of the 200th birthdays of both composers.

    Tickets start at $26.

    Standing in line for the latest iPhone at the Apple store  queuing for tickets to the match or even just waiting at the post office might just have got a lot easier.

Japanese car-maker Nissan announces that it has just the thing to relieve the painful legs of tired queuers.

    The new system of self-driving chairs is designed to detect when someone at the front of the queue is called, and automatically move everyone else one step forward in line.

    The new invention is shown in a company video, which shows a busy restaurant with customers waiting outside. In the video, diners are sitting in a row of chairs, but will not have to stand when the next hungry diner is called to a table. Instead, the chairs, equipped with autonomous technology that detects the seat ahead, move along a path toward the front of the line. When the person at the front of the queue is called, the empty chair at the front can sense it is empty and so moves out of line. Cameras on the remaining chairs then sense the movement and follow automatically.

    “The system, which is similar to the kind used in Nissan's autonomous vehicle technology, will be tested at select restaurants in Japan this year," Nissan said. "It appeals to anyone who has queued for hours outside a crowded restaurant: it rids the boredom and physical pain of standing in line,” Nissan added.

    Although Tokyo has some 160,000 restaurants, long queues are not uncommon. Chosen restaurants that meet the criteria will be able to show the chairs outside their restaurants next year. Nissan also released a short video showing the chairs being used in an art gallery, moving slowly in front of the various paintings to let viewers appreciate the art without the need to stand up.