It was Mother's Day morning last year and I was doing my shopping at our local supermarket with my five-year-old son, Tenyson. As we were leaving, we found that only minutes earlier an elderly woman had fallen over at the entrance and had hit her head on the concrete. Her husband was with her, but there was blood everywhere and the woman was embarrassed and clearly in shock.

    Walking towards the scene, Tenyson became very upset about what had happened to the couple. He said to me, “Mum, it's not much fun falling over in front of everyone.”

    At the front of the supermarket a charity(慈善) group had set up a stand selling cooked sausages and flowers to raise funds. Tenyson suggested that we should buy the lady a flower. “It will make her feel better,” he said. I was amazed that he'd come up with such a sweet idea. So we went over to the flower seller and asked her if we could buy a flower for the lady to cheer her up. “Just take it,” she replied. “I can't take your money for such a wonderful gesture.”

    By now paramedics（救援人员）had arrived, and were attending the injured woman. As we walked up to her, my son became intimidated by all the blood and medical equipment. He said he was just too scared to go up to her. Instead I gave the flower to the woman's husband and told him, “ My son was very upset for your wife and wanted to give her this flower to make her feel better.”

    At that, the old man started crying and said, “Thank you so much, you have a wonderful son. Happy Mother's Day to you.”

    The man then bent down and gave his wife the flower, telling her who it was from. Though badly hurt and shaken, the old lady looked up at Tenyson with love in her eyes and gave him a little smile.

    On the third Sunday in June, Americans take time to recognize and thank a special person in the family -fathers! Father's Day celebrates the importance of fathers, young and old and the men thought of as father figures.

    The words "the child is father of the man" come from William Wordsworth's poem My Heart Leaps Up. "It means people's personalities form when they are children. They will most likely have the same qualities as an adult that they had as a child.

    Used in everyday speech, one could say, "In his case, the child was father of the man; he loved nature as a child and now works as a botanist(植物学家)".

    Let's say you want to tell a child a story about something that happened long before they were born. You could say it happened when they “were just a twinkle in their father's eyes.” This expression has a humorous and dreamy feel. Here, the word “twinkle” suggests the interest your father had in your mother.

    When a much older man is interested in a much younger woman and supports her with his money, he is called he “sugar daddy.” The money part is very important-that's the sugar.

    Sometimes fathers are not a good influence or active in the lives of the children. In that case, a person may look for a father figure, a man who is not actually the person's father but who acts like one.

    The relationship between a man and his son can be complex. But the relationship between a father and daughter is often simpler. The expression “daddy's little girl” is understood to mean that, in a father's eyes, his daughter can do no wrong.

    There is usually not a dry eye at any wedding during the traditional father-and-daughter dance, especially if they are dancing to a song like Michael Buble's “Daddy's Little Girl.”

    The clock struck eleven at night. The whole house was quiet. Everyone was in bed except me. Under the strong light, I looked sad before a huge pile of troublesome stuff that were called “books”. I was going to have my exam the next day. "When can I go to bed?" I asked myself. I didn't answer; as a matter of fact, I dared not.

    The clock struck twelve. "Oh, dear!" I cried, "five more books to read before I can go to bed!” We pupils are the poorest in the world. Dad does not agree with me on this. He did not have to work so hard when he was a boy.

    The clock struck one. I was quite hopeless now. I forgot all I had learnt. I was too tired to go on. I did the only thing I could. I prayed, “Oh, God! Please help me pass the exam tomorrow. I do promise to work hard afterwards, Amen.” My eyes were so heavy that I could hardly open them. A few minutes later, with my head on the desk, I fell asleep.

    That cold January night, I was growing sick of my life in San Francisco. There I was, walking home at one in the morning after a tiring practice at the theater. With opening night only a week away, I was still learning my lines. I was having trouble dealing with my part-time job at the bank and my acting at night at the same time. As I walked, I thought seriously about giving up both acting and San Francisco. City life had become too much for me.

    As I walked down empty streets under tall buildings, I felt very small and cold. I began running, both to keep warm and to keep away any possible robbers. Very few people were still out except a few sad-looking homeless people under blankets.

    About a block from my apartment, I heard a sound behind me. I turned quickly, half expecting to see someone with a knife or a gun. The street was empty. All I saw was a shining streetlight. Still, the noise had made me nervous, so I started to run faster. Not until I reached my apartment building and unlocked the door did I realize what the noise had been. It had been my wallet falling to the sidewalk.

    Suddenly I wasn't cold or tired anymore. I ran out of the door and back to where I'd heard the noise. Although I searched the sidewalk anxiously for fifteen minutes, my wallet was nowhere to be found.

    Just as I was about to give up the search, I heard the garbage truck pull up to the sidewalk next to me. When a voice called from the inside, "Alisa Camacho?" I thought I was dreaming. How could this man know my name? The door opened, and out jumped a small red-haired man with an amused look in his eyes. "Is this what you're looking for?" he asked, holding up a small square shape.

    It was nearly 3 a. m. by the time I got into bed. I wouldn't get much sleep that night, but I had got my wallet back. I also had got back some enjoyment of city life. I realized that the city couldn't be a bad place as long as people were willing to help each other.

    I was desperately nervous about becoming car-free. But eight months ago our car was hit by a passing vehicle and it was destroyed. No problem, I thought: we'll buy another. But the insurance payout didn't even begin to cover the costs of buying a new car－I worked out that, with the loan, we'd need plus petrol, insurance, parking permits and tax, we would make a payment as much as £600 a month.

    And that's when I had my fancy idea. Why not just give up having a car at all? I live in London. We have a railway station behind our house, a tube station 10 minutes' walk away, and a bus stop at the end of the street. A new car club had just opened in our area, and one of its shiny little red Peugeots was parked nearby. If any family in Britain could live without a car, I reasoned, then surely we were that family.

    But my new car-free idea, sadly, wasn't shared by my family. My teenage daughters were horrified. What would their friends think about our family being "too poor to afford a car"? (I wasn't that bothered what they thought, and I suggested the girls should take the same approach.)

    My friends, too, were astonished at our plan. What would happen if someone got seriously ill overnight and needed to go to hospital? (an ambulance) How would the children get to and from their many events? (buses and trains) People smiled as though this was another of my mad ideas, before saying they were sure I'd soon realize that a car was a necessity.

    Eight months on, I wonder whether we'll ever own a car again. The idea that you "have to" own a car, especially if you live in a city, is all in the mind. I live—and many other citizens do too—in a place that has never been better served by public transport, and yet car ownership has never been higher. We worry about rising car costs, but we'd be better off asking something much more basic: do I really need a car? Certainly the answer is no, and I'm a lot richer because I dared to ask the question.

Steven Stein likes to follow garbage trucks. His strange habit makes sense when you consider that he's an environmental scientist who studies how to reduce litter, including things that fall off garbage trucks as they drive down the road. What is even more interesting is that one of Stein's jobs is defending an industry behind the plastic shopping bags.

Americans use more than 100 billion thin film plastic bags every year. So many end up in tree branches or along highways that a growing number of cities do not allow them at checkouts(收银台). The bags are prohibited in some 90 cities in California, including Los Angeles. Eyeing these headwinds, plastic-bag makers are hiring scientists like Stein to make the case that their products are not as bad for the planet as most people assume.

Among the bag makers' argument: many cities with bans still allow shoppers to purchase paper bags, which are easily recycled but require more energy to produce and transport. And while plastic bags may be ugly to look at, they represent a small percentage of all garbage on the ground today.

The industry has also taken aim at the product that has appeared as its replacement: reusable shopping bags. The stronger a reusable bag is, the longer its life and the more plastic-bag use it cancels out. However, longer-lasting reusable bags often require more energy to make. One study found that a cotton bag must be used at least 131 times to be better for the planet than plastic.

Environmentalists don't dispute (质疑) these points. They hope paper bags will be banned someday too and want shoppers to use the same reusable bags for years.