When I was about 12, I had an enemy, a girl who liked to point out my shortcomings(缺点). Week by week her list grew: I was very thin, I wasn't a good student, I talked too much, I was too proud, and so on. I tried to hear all this as long as I could. At last, I became very angry. I ran to my father with tears in my eyes.

    He listened to me quietly, and then he asked, “Are the things she says true or not? Janet, didn't you ever wonder what you're really like? Well, you now have that girl's opinion. Go and make a list of everything she said and mark the points that are true. Pay no attention to the other things she said.”

    I did as he told me. To my great surprise, I discovered that about half the things were true. Some of them I couldn't change (like being very thin), but a good number I could—and suddenly I wanted to change. For the first time I got a fairly clear picture of myself.

    I brought the list back to Daddy. He refused to take it. “That's just for you,” he said. “You know better than anyone else the truth about yourself. But you have to learn to listen, not just close your ears in anger and feel hurt. When something said about you is true, you'll find it will be of help to you. Our world is full of people who think they know your duty. Don't shut your ears. Listen to them all, but hear the truth and do what you know is the right thing to do.”

    Daddy's advice has returned to me at many important moments. In my life, I've never had a better piece of advice.

    “There's a mother in PICU(儿童重症监护病房)who wants to talk about a kit she received,” the nurse told me. “Something about it made her cry.”

    I've been a child-1ife specialist at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital since 2000. I help families understand diagnoses and treatment plans and manage the ups and downs that come with caring for a sick child. Tough talks with parents are part of the job, which still makes me feel nervous.

    The kits the nurse was talking about were something I had recently introduced to the hospital: Comfort Kits from Guideposts. They were supposed to make a child's experience here easier, not upsetting.

    When I came across the kits at a conference. I fell in love with them. A treasure box of items designed not only to entertain kids, but to comfort and inspire them. There's a coloring book, a stress ball, a CD of relaxing music, a hairy star named Sparkle, a journal and much more. I really believed these kits would help kids. I wished I hadn't been mistaken.

    At the patient's room in PICU I saw a little girl, sleeping soundly, surrounded by tubes and machines. My eyes met her mother's. The kit was open on her lap and tears were running down her cheeks.

    “I'm Shannon. I manage the Child Life Department.” I said. “I'm sorry if the kit upset you .It's a new item…”

    The mother shook her head. “This has been one of the worst days of my life .I felt so scared and alone. Then I was handed this box. I know it's for my daughter, but it's just the comfort I needed. I wanted to say thank you.”

    With that I knew Comfort Kits belonged here. We've been using them for almost three years now. Each child who's admitted to the hospital receives one. Every day I see kids coloring, journaling, playing with Sparkle.

    But as this mom showed me Comfort Kits aren't just for kids. The hope they bring, which can be in short supply in hospitals sometimes, is felt by the whole family.

    When I lived in Spain, some Spanish friends of mine The family you have chosen decided to visit England by car. Before they left, they asked me for advice about how to find accommodation. I suggested that they should stay at 'bed and breakfast' houses, because this kind of accommodation gives a foreign visitor a good chance to speak English with the family. My friends listened to my advice, but they came back with some funny stories.

"We didn't stay at bed and breakfast houses," they said, "because we found that most families were away on holiday."

I thought this was strange. Finally I understood what had happened. My friends spoke little English, and they thought 'VACANCIES' meant 'holidays', because the Spanish word for 'holidays" is 'vacancies'. So they did not go to house where the sign outside said 'VACANCIES', which in English means there are free rooms. Then my friends went to house where the sign said 'NO VACANCLES', because they thought this meant the people who owned the house were not away on holiday. But they found that these houses were all full. As a result, they stayed at hotels!

We laughed about this and about mistakes my friends made in reading other signs. In Spanish, the word 'DIVERSION' means fun. In English, it means that workmen are repairing the road, and that you must take a different road. When my friends saw the word 'DIVERSION' on a road sign, they thought they were going to have fun. Instead, the road ended in a large hole.

English people have problems too when they learn foreign languages. Once in Paris, when someone offered me some more coffee, I said "Thank you" in French. I meant that I would like some more. However, to my surprise the coffee pot was taken away! Later I found out that "Thank you" in French means "No, thank you."

    The siesta competition took place in a supermarket, with plenty of shoppers, screaming babies, talking voices, and footsteps to take the competitors' attention away from their after lunch sleeps.

    Five bright blue sofas were laid out, and five competitors at a time were allowed to take a 20-minute sleep. A doctor measured their pulse to time how long they actually spent on asleep. Competitors earned extra points for snoring (打鼾), sleeping in strange positions, or wearing silly pajamas (睡衣). The winners of each round advance to the next stage in the competition.

    It's amazing that any of those people would fall asleep in the middle of such a busy place, while on couches that they are not used to. Yet, many of them did. They hugged pillows or soft toy bears. They covered their eyes with sleep masks, too. Whatever it took to help them fall asleep fast and stay asleep.

    The siesta is a tradition in Spain that many feel is becoming forgotten. It used to be that people would take a brief nap after lunch every day. This would energize them, and keep them going for the rest of the day. Not to mention the health benefits of a good nap. But, that's all changing. People are too busy making money or watching gossip shows on TV after lunch to care about taking a nap.

    The National Association of Friends of the Siesta wants to bring Spain back to their traditional roots. They are doing this by having the siesta competition. They set up the competition to reward the best sleepers with money. Actually, they were paid to sleep.

    There are really health benefits to a midday nap. We could all learn from this tradition. It's a much better way to get more energy than drinking a cup of coffee. It is also believed that a nap, and in fact a good night's sleep, can help reduce heart disease. The more rested we are, the less stress we feel with day-to-day life.

Half a Day

    I walked alongside my father, holding his right hand. All my clothes were new: the black shoes, the green school uniform, and the red cap. They did not make me happy, however, as this was the day I was to be thrown into school for the first time.

    "Why school?" I asked my father. "What have I done?"

    "I'm not punishing you," he said, laughing. "School's not a punishment. It's a place that makes useful men out of boys. Don't you want to be useful like your brothers?"

    I was not convinced. I did not believe there was really any good to be had in tearing me away from my home and throwing me into the huge, high-walled building.

    When we arrived at the gate we could see the courtyard, vast and full of boys and girls. "Go in by you," said my father, "and join them. Put a smile on your face and be a good example to others."

    I hesitated and squeezed his hand firmly, but he gently pushed me from him. "Be a man", he said. "Today you truly begin life. You will find me waiting for you when it's time to leave."

    I took a few steps. Then the faces of the boys and girls came into view. I did not know a single one of them, and none of them knew me. I felt I was a stranger who had lost his way. But then some boys began to glance at me in curiosity, and one of them came over and asked, "Who brought you?"

    "My father," I whispered.

    "My father's dead," he said simply.

    I did not know what to say. The gate was now closed. Some of the children burst into tears. The bell rang. A lady came along and said, "This is your new home. There are mothers and fathers here, too. Everything that is enjoyable and beneficial is here. So dry your tears and face life joyfully."

    Well, it seemed that my misgivings had had no basis. From the first moments I made many friends. I had never imagined school would have this rich variety of experiences.

    "If they hated me they didn't talk to me about it," says a young German manager at a media firm in Frankfurt. Still, he says it was noticeable that when an employee 20 years older than him thanked him for buying lunch he had to swallow twice before adding the word "boss".

    Older workers sometimes envy being managed by a younger colleague. Precocious (老成的) youngsters, too, can feel awkward about bossing their elders around. But in Germany a shortage of skilled workers means that such situations are becoming even more common.

    The country's population is projected to shrink. As more Germans retire, fewer youngsters are entering the work-place to replace them. As a share of the working population the number of 15-to-24-year-olds has fallen by ten percent since the 1980s, says the German Federal Employment Agency. Firms competing to hire young talent have to promote them earlier as a result. A paper by professors at the university of Cambridge and WHU, a German business school, to be published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, suggests this could be a problem.

    As in many countries, German work-places are legally obliged to overlook age when deciding whom to promote. Yet according to Jochen Menges, one of the authors, when an ordinary worker leap-frogs a more experienced one it can leave the latter with feelings of "anger, fear and disgust." People tend to judge their own standing by the success of their peers, and to see failure in being bossed about by someone younger. The relationship between feelings of anxiety and the age of the boss is clear, according to Mr Menges. A manager who is younger by one year is somewhat unsettling; a gap of 20 years is far more discouraging.

    German firms certainly shouldn't return to a system in which age equals to rank. But young people tend to be sensitive about managing upwards. And older workers should be encouraged to see the bright side of learning new skills. Daimler, a big German car firm, says it promotes age- mixed teams, so that knowledge can be transferred between generations. It also supports young managers by asking retired employees to provide temporary support.