Jimmy always perceived himself as a progressive dad, very open to different minds and perceptions. While he had imagined all sorts of headaches his son would possibly bring him to confront, never did it occur to him that the headache would come so early.
When his son was just a baby, asked about his favorite color, he babbled out “pink”. Seriously, what a baby said wasn’t a big deal and Jimmy didn’t make a fuss at that moment, but deep down inside, he felt somewhat uncomfortable and a huge question mark kept haunting him. How could a boy supposed to love ball games and racing cars become a fan of pink, a color that was generally regarded “girly”?
Jimmy even worried about the future school life of his son. He repeatedly pictured a horrifying situation where his son got bullied because he was labelled girly. On some nights, in his nightmare, the tease his son suffered and the miserable screams his son let out seemed louder against the deafening silence and the intense darkness of the night.
One incident always succeeded another. One day, when Jimmy returned home from a long day’s tedious work, his wife showed him a photo on her phone where all the finger nails of a pair of little hands were colored black. Apparently, those were his son’s hands. His son might have thought it was cool to learn from his mother painting her nails, so he grabbed a marker and colored his own.
Jimmy got shocked inside. What his son had done to his nails hit Jimmy’s bottom line. He was on the verge of explosion, with all the worst ideas dashing back and forth in his mind. At the thought of the possibility that his recurring nightmare would come true and that his son would be discriminated out of his own choice and preference that were not generally accepted, he almost collapsed as if he had been torn apart and his heart had got smashed to pieces. He considered scolding his son not because his son had shamed him, but because he could no longer mask his worry aroused by his son’s rough future that he thought was due to come.
注意∶
1. 续写词数应为150左右;
2. 请按照如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
His wife sensed his overanxiety and tried to comfort him.
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Feeling somewhat ashamed, he walked into his son’s room.
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相似题推荐
Moving In
My eighty-five-year-old mother offered that familiar tilt (歪头) of the head, the one that told me something was up. I tensed my shoulders and bit my lip, waiting for whatever was coming next.
I could handle it. She was predictable, though dramatic. I expected her to express her thoughts on the latest news or share the senior community news.
Instead, she calmly said, as though she were sharing her dinner menu, “I’m going to downsize and sell my house and nearly everything I own.” The breaking news was followed by a matter of fact stare.
“Do what?” I asked. “I’ll be a floater,” she said.
“I’ll stay with you, then with my brothers in Maine, and then with some of my friends. I’ll just float around and enjoy myself.” She laughed as though she’d just discovered the perfect lifestyle. “I’ll take my cat everywhere with me. I can’t bear to leave him behind or give him away. What do you think?”
“No one will want you to show up with your cat.” My answer seemed a shock to her. After only seconds, she added, “Well, I just won’t tell them he’s coming. We’ll just show up. What can they do?”
Shocked, I took a deep breath and forced myself to respond by explaining all the reasons why selling, moving in with me, and fearlessly dragging the cat across the country in secret were terrible ideas.
Unbothered, she simply said, “You’re so dramatic. It’ll be fine.”
I didn’t take her announcement seriously. A few days after her announcement,my brother and I enjoyed a few laughs over her idea. After all, our mother was too independent to be placed in a place long-term with any of her children. She had made this clear on many occasions when I’d begged to live next door to her. I’d wanted to be close enough to watch over her but not too close, but she’d always refused.
I enjoyed living alone, hearing the quiet, writing and reading. I hated noise. My mother loved radio, television, and phone calls, endless phone calls. We would not make good housemates.
注意：
1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
I really panicked when she started having yard sales.
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I took her to my home from the hospital happily, no longer bothered by her moving in.
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From childhood, I was never a fan of football or any sports. My disinterest in “The Beautiful Game” was my attitude, avoiding discussions of football during school lunch breaks in school or dismissing the sports section of the newspaper.
As I grew older, my lack of interest became more obvious. I would go shopping during big games, posting photos on social media to show I had more free time than the people absorbed in their yearly sports. I considered my disengagement from the world of sports an intellectual advantage, a space in my brain reserved for non-sports activities.
However, this attitude of mine became a pressure to me. Casual conversations with friends’ fathers or fellow cab passengers became a challenge. The well-intentioned openers like, “Hey, terrible season we’re having, eh?” or “Who do you support?” made me feel my heart sink, not knowing what to reply. Though I still found football boring, I was starting to regret my outsider status.
The turning point came when I became a father myself. Fearing that my boy Harvey would lack the social involvement of football, I decided to change. So, I brought a football to the playground and I bought him a mini football table at home. I even took the brave step of buying tickets to watch our local team, Boreham Wood.
The friendly atmosphere of the Meadow Park Stadium, the home ground of Boreham Wood, immediately surprised me: low-key, free parking on the street, and £2.50 for a bag of chips. Families surrounded us, all with a real connection to the players on the field.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Slowly but surely, I found myself engaged in the game.
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With each visit to the stadium, our connection to football deepened.
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Carlos and Maya dreamed of becoming space explorers.
On their way home, Carlos and Maya saw a spaceship in the window of a toy store. They went inside the store to see how much it cost. They saw the price and it was too expensive. They tried to pool their money together but it still wasn’t enough.
They left the store sad and disappointed. Carlos suddenly realized that his birthday was coming up. Maybe he could ask their parents to buy the spaceship as a gift for his birthday.
When they got home, Carlos ran straight to their mother and told her what he wanted for his birthday.
Their family didn’t have much when it came to money. So, when their dad stopped by the store to see the toy that Carlos wanted, he found it was too expensive. They couldn’t afford it.
On the day of his birthday, Carlos got up early, excited to see his gift. But when he got to the living room, he saw a spaceship that was made out of a cardboard box. His dad had made it for him. It had wings on each side and had enough space to ride in. It was a spaceship but it wasn’t what he wanted.
Tears flowed (流) from Carlos’ eyes and he ran back to his room. Maya had just woken up and saw their mom knocking on the door and asking Carlos to come out. But he didn’t want to.
Maya got to the living room but couldn’t see the spaceship they had seen, only the cardboard box. She saw their dad beside it, bent down (弯着腰) on one knee with his head down.
Maya didn’t want her brother to be sad on his birthday. So she tried to think of a way to cheer her brother up. She looked at the cardboard spaceship and got an idea.
Carlos didn’t have breakfast and now he was hungry. He was about to get out of bed when he heard a knock on the door. It was Maya. She said that they had a surprise for him.
注意：
1.续写词数应为150左右；
2，请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
Carlos opened the door and just saw Maya was sitting in the cardboard spaceship.
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A moment later, they stopped at the dinner table where there was a card that said “Best Restaurant in Space”.
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My husband and I enjoy seeing life through the eyes of our children. It’s amazing to watch as they discover their world.
While we were outdoors last summer enjoying the sunshine, our oldest daughter, Kaytlin, called me to the doorway. Beneath the steps was a baby red squirrel.
We watched it from a distance, not wanting to disturb it or scare off its mother. But after a long wait—and looking all around our house for signs of a nest or a mother—we realized the tiny squirrel was lost.
Shaking terribly, he was weak, thin, and hungry. We tried to find an expert to help, but the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife website showed that there were no wildlife experts in our area. After some quick research, we concluded that the best way to give the squirrel a fighting chance was to care for him ourselves. So a trip to the local store for milk and supplies was in order. More research taught us how much to feed him, how to estimate his age, how and when to wean (断奶) him, and that we should let him go as soon as he could survive on his own.
Our daughters and I took turns in feeding “Squirt.” Kaytlin took on the most responsibility. She taught him to eat from a bottle, and she woke in the night for his feeds.
To our relief, Squirt soon became healthy and strong. Within a few weeks he became more active. He would chatter (吱吱叫) for his next meal, playfully go around the girls, and lie down on them for sleep. It wasn’t long before he was weaned onto solid food and reintroduced to the wild.
His first few visits to the great outdoors were funny. Just like a child, he would play in the grass some and then run back to Kaytlin for safety. Soon she had him climbing trees and finding nest material.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
One day in the trees, Squirt met up with a family of gray squirrels.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________One night, Squirt didn’t come back to our house and it rained hard.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________My 10-year-old daughter and I were driving from Los Angeles to Dallas. We were running low on gas somewhere in New Mexico and figured we’d see a gas station soon enough to fill up.
But that didn’t happen and we realized we were not going to make it to the next town. So my daughter made up a sign that read “Low on gas. Can u help?” and held it outside her window in the hope that a driver in the next lane would notice it and stop.
There weren’t too many vehicles passing us at the time. It was a desolate (荒凉的) stretch of road and about 3:30 pm on a weekday. A suburban was driving along happily in the neighboring lane ahead of us. We caught up with it in the hope the driver would notice the sign.
An elderly gentleman was driving it and after a brief expression of confusion on his face, he seemed to have noticed the sign and slowed down to pull over. We pulled over right behind him.
He was friendly and was eager to help us. At first he thought we didn’t have enough money to buy gas, so he offered to buy us gas at the next town Roswell that was about 10 miles away!! Awfully sweet of a stranger to offer that.
When we explained our difficulty of not having enough gas to get to Roswell, he said he was a ranch (牧场) hand that was returning home from work. His ranch was about 20 minutes away and they had a gas pump on there, so if we could give him 40 minutes, he would head back there, get a can of gasoline and fill up our tank for us.
注意：
1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
It was a long wait.
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Filled with gratitude, we decided to do something.
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【推荐3】We have a Norwegian elkhound (柴犬) named Torgy. Elkhounds are beautiful. They are medium-sized, strong, square-looking dogs. Their thick, silver-gray fur (皮毛) has a pure white undercoat, making a kind of flag that moves up and down when they run. They run everywhere. In fact, they are good at roaming (闲逛), and Torgy is better than most of his breed.
In August, the heat wave started. For quite a few days, Torgy started disappearing in the afternoon, and he wouldn’t show up again until we were getting supper on the table. Every day, Torgy hung around during the cool of the morning, but as the sun rose to its full height, he got up from his favorite spot under the elm tree, stretched, shook himself all over, and ran out of the yard.
There was no water from the stream or mud from the fishing pond. No dust from the country roads or weeds from the woods. Why could Torgy come home remarkably clean as a dog on the move?
“Where have you been, Torgy?” I turned his head toward me and looked him in the eyes. He licked my nose.
A week later, Mom took us on a walk downtown. It is only four blocks from our house to the middle of the town, which is how small it is. We walked down Division Street, which brought us right by the Webb Fur Salon, the newest store in town and the only one with air conditioning.
In the middle of summer, it wasn’t easy to sell furs. It was said Mr. Webb, the store owner, was offering some discounts in order to attract customers. The air conditioning also provided a comfortable environment for this purpose.
“Let’s see which fur I’m going to pick out today,” Mom said as she approached the display window where the expensive, fur-hanging mannequins (人体模特) were on show. She looked in the window and stopped dead in shock.
Paragraph 1: Her mouth kept opening and closing but no sound came out.
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Paragraph 2: “Your dog has been making himself at home in our window for days,” Mr. Webb explained with a big smile.
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