Proudly reading my words, I glanced around the room, only to find my classmates bearing big smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes. Confused, I glanced toward my stone­faced teacher. Having no choice, I slowly raised the report I had read carefully, hoping to hide myself. “What could be causing everyone to act this way？”

    Quickly, I flashed back to the day Miss Lancelot gave me the task. This was the first real task I received in my new school. It seemed simple: go on the Internet and find information about a man named George Washington. Since my idea of history came from an ancient teacher in my home country, I had never heard of that name before. As I searched the name of this fellow, it became evident that there were two people bearing the same name who looked completely different! One invented hundreds of uses for peanuts, while the other led some sort of army across America. I stared at the screen, wondering which one my teacher meant. I called my grandfather for a golden piece of advice: flip (掷) a coin. Heads—the commander, and tails—the peanuts guy. Ah! Tails，my report would be about the great man who invented peanut butter, George Washington Carver.

    Weeks later, standing before this unfriendly class, I was totally lost. Oh well, I lowered the paper and sat down at my desk, burning to find out what I had done wrong. As a classmate began his report, it all became clear，“My report is on George Washington, the man who started the American Revolution.” The whole world became quiet! How could I know that she meant that George Washington?

    Obviously, my grade was awful. Heartbroken but fearless, I decided to turn this around. I talked to Miss Lancelot, but she insisted: No re­dos; no new grade. I felt that the punishment was not fair, and I believed I deserved a second chance. Consequently, I threw myself heartily into my work for the rest of the school year. Ten months later, that chance unfolded as I found myself sitting in the headmaster's office with my grandfather, now having an entirely different conversation. I smiled and flashed back to the embarrassing moment at the beginning of the year as the headmaster informed me of my opinion to skip the sixth grade. Justice is sweet!

    When I was eight or nine years old, I wrote my first poem.

My mother read the little poem and began to cry. "Buddy, you didn't really write this beautiful, beautiful poem!" Shyly, I said that I had. My mother poured out her welcome praise. Why, this poem was nothing short of genius!

What time will Father be home?" I asked. I could hardly wait to show him what I had accomplished. My mother said she hoped he would be home around 7. I spent the best part of that afternoon preparing for his arrival. First, I wrote the poem out in my finest handwriting. Then I used colored pens to draw a border around it. Then I confidently placed it right on my father's plate on the dining table. But my father did not return at 7, Seven-fifteen, Seven-thirty. My father had begun his motion-picture career as a writer. He would be able to appreciate my poem even more than my mother.

    It was almost 8 o'clock when my father burst in. He was an hour late, but he could not sit down. I can see him now, a big Havana cigar in one hand, the rapidly disappearing drink in the other, calling down bitter words on his employees.

    Suddenly, he paused and glared at his plate. There was a silence. He was reaching for my poem. I lowered my head and stared down into my plate.

"What is this?" I heard him say.

"Ben, a wonderful thing has happened," my mother said. "Buddy has written his first poem. And it's beautiful, absolutely amazing".

"If you don't mind, I'd like to decide that for myself," Father said.

I kept my face lowered to my plate. It was only 10 lines long. But it seemed to take hours. I remember wondering why it was taking so long. I could hear him dropping the poem back on the table again. Now was the moment of decision.

"I think it's bad," my father said.

    I couldn't look up. My eyes were getting wet.

"Ben, sometimes I don't understand you," my mother was saying. "This is just a little boy. You're not in your studio now. These are the first lines of poetry he's ever written. He need encouragement."

"I don't know why," my father held his ground. "Isn't there enough bad poetry in the world already? No law says Buddy has to become a poet."

    I couldn't stand it another second. I ran from the dining room, threw myself on the bed and cried.

    That may have been the end of the anecdote(轶事) — but not of its significance for me.

    A few years later I took a second look at that first poem, and unwillingly I had to agree with my father's tough judgment. It was a pretty bad poem. After a while, I worked up the courage to show him something new, a short story. My father thought it was overwritten but not hopeless. I was learning to rewrite. And my mother was learning that she could disapprove of me without ruining me. You might say we were all learning. I was going on 12.

As I worked my way into other books and plays and films, it became clearer and clearer to me how fortunate I had been to have had a mother who said, "Buddy, it's wonderful!" and a father who shook his head no and drove me to tears with his, "I think it's bad." In fact all of us in life need that mother force, the loving force from which all creation flows; and yet the mother force alone is incomplete, even misleading, finally damaging, without the father force to caution, "Watch. Listen. Review. Improve." Between the two poles of affirmation (肯定) and doubt, both in the name of love, I try to follow my true course.

    When 19-year-old Sophia Giorgi said she was thinking of volunteering to help the Make-A-Wish Foundation (基金会)，nobody understood what she was talking about. But Sophia knew just how important Make – A –Wish could be because this special organization had helped to make a dream come true for one her best friends. We were interested in finding out more, so we went along to meet Sophia listen to what she had to say.

    Sophia told us that Make – A –Wish is a worldwide organization that started in the United States in 1980. ” It's a charity(慈善机构)that helps children who have got very serious illnesses. Make – A –Wish help children feel happy even though they are sick, by making their wishes and dreams come true, ” Sophia explained.

We asked Sophia how Make – A –Wish had first started. She said it had all begun with a very sick young boy called Chris, who had been dreaming for a long time of becoming a policeman. Sophia said lots of people had wanted to find a way to make Chris's dream come true —-so, with everybody's help, Chris, only seven years old at the time, had been a “policeman” for a day. ” when people saw how delighted Chris was when his dream came true, they decided to try and help other sick children too , and that was the beginning of Make – A –Wish, ” explained Sophia.

    Sophia also told us the Foundation tries to give children and their families a special, happy time. A Make-A-Wish volunteer visits the families and asks the children what they would wish for if they could have anything in the world. Sophia said the volunteers were important because they were the ones who helped to make the wishes come true. They do this either by providing things that are necessary, or by raising money or helping out in whatever way they can.

    Sure, you talk to your parents, but what if you need to really talk? Maybe you have a problem you can't solve alone, or it could be that you want to feel closer to Mom and Dad.

    It's easy to say" Hi, Mom" or "Dad, can you pass the potatoes?", but it can be harder to start a discussion about tougher topics. When you were younger, it probably felt easy to tell your parents about your trouble. Even though you're older now, it's still perfectly OK to believe in your parents. In fact, it can help a lot.

    So why does it seem so uncomfortable at times? Why is it hard to bring up the important stuff? Sometimes kids don't speak up because they don't want to feel embarrassed. Let's face it—talking about personal stuff can make you feel embarrassed. But remember, your parents know you pretty well, and they were your age once, too! So don't let a little embarrassment stop you. It's OK to go ahead and share the personal stuff.

    Other times, kids might not want to make their parents anxious or upset. As you explain your problem, your mom might look sad or your dad might look worried. But that's OK. Your mom and dad can deal with knowing about your problem, big or small. That look on their face just means they care, and they feel for you. That's what families do—we feel for the people we love.

    Sometimes, kids don't bring up a problem because they just don't want to think about it. They hope it will just go away. When meeting a problem, they will likely choose not to face it or just keep it for themselves. But running away from a problem hardly ever solves it. And bottling up your feelings can make you feel stressed.

    Talking things over with a parent can help you feel less stressed. Together, you can think of ways to solve the problem and make you feel better. Just knowing your parent understands and cares about what you're going through can reduce your stress a lot.

    Working or learning in a foreign country can be a difficult experience. The hardest part of working abroad isn't finding a place to stay or learning the language. It's learning to overcome the culture shock.

    These things are part of everyday life, and include many signs, gestures, facial expressions, and customs. When we enter a new culture, these cues (提示)are usually not present or so different that they're no longer understandable to us.

    "When a person enters a foreign culture," wrote Oberg, "all or most of these familiar cues are eliminated. He or she is like a fish out of water. No matter how broad-minded he or she may be, lots of props(支柱) have been knocked out from the environment."

    This is what happened to Lara, a young IT consultant (顾问) from America moved last year to their company in southern Europe. Three weeks after she arrived in Europe. Lara sent a desperate e-mail begging to return home. "The people are so unfriendly, "Lara wrote ,"They eat at strange hours and I'm starting to get allergic (过敏的)to the local food. I can't get anything done because their way of doing business is so disorganized and so inefficient and I have a terrible skin itch because of the water. I want to come home! "

    What Lara and other IT consultants meet on their first assignment abroad is a culture shock. While you can't prevent the culture shock from happening, you can take some measures to cut down its effects.

It's breathtaking to watch the delicate spring wildflowers come out from their blanket of leaves, bloom, develop and disperse (传播) fruit, all in a matter of a few short days or weeks.

Although they look fragile, these are tough little plants, each focusing its efforts on spreading its species. They have evolved to have a wide range of flower structures and colors, some with fragrances, attracting many different insect species to assist them in pollination (授粉).

There is one strategy that a surprising number of spring blooming native plants have evolved in common: seed dispersal by ants. As many as thirty percent of the spring flowering plant species in the forests of eastern North America have evolved to take advantage of this situation to benefit themselves. These species have evolved to provide food attached to their seeds to encourage ants to disperse those seeds. This food, called an elaiosome（油质体）, is a specialized fat body whose chemical composition more closely matches that of the insects that ants prefer than it does that of a seed.

When a fruit opens to disperse its seeds, the elaiosomes are an instant attraction for ants. They take the seed with its attached elaiosome back to their nests for consumption there, but they just eat the elaiosome, their preferred food, and dispose of the seed on their trash pile. This tends to be an environment that is rich in nutrients, and will benefit the growth of the new plant. Just to make sure the ants don't eat the seeds in addition to the elaiosome, some plant species have hard seed coatings that ants can't really bite through.

This evolutionary adaptation is somewhat similar to the strategy of plants that have evolved to surround their seeds with fleshy fruits to attract birds to assist them with seed dispersal. Given the fact that there are fewer birds available in early spring to help with seed dispersal, it makes sense that the early blooming plants evolved to partner instead with the ants for this service.

Did you ever wonder how your Spring Beauty managed to pop up in new locations in your lawn or garden? Thank an ant!