B

    When I was a little girl, my father loved to play catch (抛接球游戏) with me. I wasn't very good, but he would encourage me. He was always telling me “keep your eye on the ball” as I would not be able to catch even the easiest of throws.

    As I got older, we didn't play catch as much. If I had a problem, I would go to my father to ask for his advice. He would try to joke with me and say “keep your eye on the ball”. We would both laugh because usually that advice did not apply to(适用于) the problem, but he would try to make me smile.

    My father became ill in 1995 when I was 23. As he suffered from a stroke (中风), he could not speak. There weren't any more conversations. He could only mouth words, which were sometimes hard to understand. After a while, I seemed to be pretty good at reading his lips (嘴唇), even better than the nurses who were caring for him.

    During our last conversation, I was telling him about a problem I was having with my then boyfriend. Once again, I could read his lips： “Keep your eye on the ball.” We both smiled.

    That was the last time I saw my father before he passed away.

    Since then, when I get into a stressful situation I tell myself “keep your eye on the ball”.

    A young man worked very hard at his lessons. He was too busy to have a rest. At last, he became ill, so he couldn't go to sleep. Every night, when he went to bed, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But he always stayed awake and couldn't fall asleep.

    After some days, he decided to see a doctor.” I just can't go to sleep at night. What should I do? Could you please help me?”

    “I have a suggestion(建议)，”said the doctor. “Try counting numbers. By the time you reach one thousand, you'll be asleep. I'm sure of it.”

    The next day the man returned to the doctor's office. “Well,” said the doctor, how are you today? Did you try my suggestion?”

    The man still looked tired. “Yes,” he said, “I tried counting one, two, three-up to one thousand. But when I reached five hundred and sixty-nine, I began to feel sleepy. I had to get up and drink some tea so that I could go on counting up to one thousand. But then I still couldn't fall asleep.”

    In our daily life, we always come to the question “What is the real beauty?” . Different people have different ideas. Last night, I read a true story from the newspaper. It's about a poor, ordinary looking old woman. She lived alone, making a living by picking things from rubbish heaps (垃圾堆). However, she took in more than ten homeless children and tried to bring them up .Every day she worked from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. In order to earn as much money as possible to raise the children and to keep them in school, she even went to a local hospital to sell her blood(血) once a month. She got so weak because of the loss of blood that she sometimes felt sick on her way home. When asked why she chose to take care of so many children, she smiled and answered,“Oh, I love children and I like to live together with them because they always bring me great happiness.” Though the old woman was poor, she was full of love and rich in spirit.So the local government and people in her city truly respected her. Maybe you can't help thinking,“What makes that poor woman so different?” It is nothing else but her inner (内部的) beauty, her true devotion of love without any thought of money. So the real beauty is the beauty in one's heart, that is, the inner beauty!

    Sally Ride was born in California in 1951. She was the first American woman to travel into space. She loved to play tennis and wanted to be a tennis player when she was young. But after three months' professional（专业的）training, she changed her mind. She went to Stanford University and started to study science. She studied stars and planets. She did researches at the university and got her PhD in astrophysics（天体物理学博士学位）after several years' hard work.

    In 1977, she took a test to become an astronaut. And then she was picked up from over 8, 000 people. In order to realize her dream of going into space, she had to get different kinds of special and difficult training. She learned how to fly a plane, how to jump out of a plane as well as how to operate（操作）special machines.

    Sally and four other astronauts flew a spaceship called Challenger on Jun. 18, 1983. She became the first American woman to travel into space. Later, she taught at the University of California. Then she wrote seven books on space for children, encouraging children to study science. Unfortunately, she died in 2012.