【推荐1】During the lockdown, my husband, Bob, and I were offered a pingpong table. I am a non-athlete but Bob does well in pingpong.

“What are we going to do with that pingpong table?” Bob asked me.

“The two of us will_______,” I replied.

Bob looked ______ .

I lost every game and I told myself that it didn’t _______that I always lost. I was playing for   ______   and to provide a positive experience in a difficult time. But there were days when I   ______   losing. Once I threw my paddle (球拍) across the yard angrily. Then Bob ______ I play with a handicap (让分) of 12 points. That   ______a lot--I sometimes won! I’d never been interested in any kind of sport. But pingpong became the ______of my day.

We generally played five games. I   ______   won two of them. Knowing that I could win sometimes made the ______   more painful, but I watched a video of high-level players and learned from them. I began to get _____   and won more games. My handicap   ______ to 8.

My husband and I ______the worst of the lockdowns through pingpong. It   ______ me that even a self- described bookworm can learn a new sport. The ______ was my husband’s suggestion that I play with a handicap so I’d have an equal ______ to win. He doesn’t like to lose either, but it’s more fun for him if I actually want to participate and   ______ it. It takes two willing partners to play table tennis, ______and two people with an equal chance in each other’s ______to make a marriage. Simply put, when it comes to table tennis — or any other ______   — there is no ping without a pong.

【推荐2】I started training in tae kwon do (跆拳道) by accident. But in the first class, I learned something exciting—how to ________ someone grabbing your arm. I loved it, so I kept practicing and earning higher ranks.

At every rank, I found something ________, whether it was the kicks in the air or the increasingly complex patterns. But over time, “I can’t” ________ “How can I?” which then became “How will I?”

One day, I showed up to class and students were ________ wooden boards. I was convinced that they were all crazy and “I can’t” voice yelled again.

I watched, in ________ as student after student walked up to solid pieces of wood and broke them with their hands or their feet. When I was given the opportunity to ________ I chickened out. But my ________ were extremely patient. They invited me to work individually with them. I refused their first and second offer, but ________, I agreed to try.

They told me that board breaking was more a mental ________ than a physical one and taught me how to line up to break that board. And the first time I went to ________ it, I was so afraid that I missed and accidentally kicked the board holder’s fingers. I felt ________ but he encouraged me to try again. I told that doubting voice in my ________ to “shut up!”

I focused on the ________ I thought about how much I had improved and how I had surprised myself. I told myself I ________ to believe that I was able to do amazing things. And then—suddenly that board looked a lot less ________ I kicked with everything I had and it worked.

【推荐1】Clara Daly was seated on an Alaska Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles. Suddenly, a flight attendant asked an ______ question: “Does anyone know American ______ Language?”

Clara, 15 at the time, pressed the call ______. The flight attendant came by and ______ the situation. “We have a passenger who’s blind and deaf. He seemed to want something, but we couldn’t understand what he ______.”

Clara had been studying ASL for the past year to help with her dyslexia (读写困难) and knew she’d be able to finger spell into the man’s ______. So, she walked toward the front of the plane, and ______ down beside Tim Cook, then ______ taking his hand, she signed, “Are you OK?” Tim asked for some water. When it arrived, Clara ______ to her seat. But she came by again later because he wanted to know the time. On her third visit, she stopped and stayed for a while.

“I was like, ‘Wow, this is cool,’” Clara says. “I hope I don’t ______ anything wrong.”

“Actually, he didn’t need anything. He was ______ and just wanted to talk.” Clara says.

Clara talked about her family and her plans for the future. Tim told Clara how he had gradually become ______ and shared stories of his days as a traveling salesman. “Although he couldn’t see her, she looked attentively at his face with ______,” a passenger reported.

“Clara was amazing,” a flight attendant told Alaska Airlines in an interview. “You could tell Tim was very excited to have someone he could ______, and she was such an ______.”

Tim’s reaction: “Best trip I’ve ever had.”

【推荐3】In the seventh grade when my other suggested that I should join the golf (高尔夫球运动) team, I thought she had lost her mind. But as usual, my mother ________ in the end. I played on the middle-school golf team in the seventh and eighth grade. The ________ before high school came, I was anxious to join the high school team.

That summer I ________ almost every Sunday morning on the golf course with my ________, and too many afternoons with my mother. This ________ relationship with my parents continued during my high school years. ________ you’re walking down the freshly mowed fairway (修剪的平坦球道), looking out across miles of nothing but golf course, and looking up at the beautiful blue sky, you will realize what is ________ in life. My mom and I ________ many things in the middle of a round of golf that we would never do at home, where she is Mom and I am a(n) ________ teenager. On the golf course, we’re just two people who ________ golf.

During the past years golfing has become a part of my ________. My friends know in the summer the place to find me is on the golf course. There is ________ I love more than a perfect autumn morning, riding around in a golf cart (球车) with my dad. Golf has ________ me and made me into the person I am today. And I have to ________ that all of it is thanks to my mom who made me join that middle-school golf team. ________, she was right.

【推荐1】I was riding a bike the other day and spotted a person, some 250 metres in front of me. I could tell he was cycling slightly slower than me and ______ to try to catch up with him. I had about a kilometer to go on the road ______ making a turn.

So I ______ cycling faster and faster and every _____ I was gaining on him just a little bit. After just a few minutes I was only about 100 yards ______ him, so I really picked up the pace and ______ myself. You would have ______ I was cycling in the last section of the London Olympic triathlon.

______ I caught up with him and passed by him. On the inside I felt so good. I beat him, of course, but he didn’t even know we were ______.

After I passed him, I ______ that I had been so focused on competing against him that I had missed my turn. I had gone nearly six blocks past it and had to turn around and go all the way back.

Isn’t that what happens in life when we ______ competing with co-workers, neighbors, and friends, trying to prove that we are more successful or more important? We spend our time and ______ chasing after them and we miss out on our own paths to our future.

The ______ of unhealthy competition is that it’s a never-ending cycle. And there will always be somebody ahead of you, someone with a ______ job, more money and more education, etc.

Therefore, just take what life has given you, your height, weight and personality. Stay focused and live a peaceful life. There’s no ______ in life. Run your own race and wish others as well!

【推荐3】The scary day of our diving(跳水)test in my Monday morning high school physical education class was here. My parents thought we were honored to have an Olympic-size swimming pool at the school. But I wasn’t so _________.

Not only was I terribly _________ in regular classes and sat in the back of the room, but also I’d not be called upon to read. Each Monday I would work my way to the back of the lane forming at the diving board so I would not have to _________ the dives.

My blood ran cold when the teacher _________ we would be graded for our final on the most difficult dive. I _________ as the line to the awful diving board shortened. As I watched, each student seemed to perform the difficult _________ effortlessly, and shortly I would have to _________ something I’d never even practiced before.

Then I remembered someone telling me that when you _________ yourself doing a skill over and over, it’s just as effective as _________ practicing that skill. So I watched carefully as each girl jumped at the end of the board once, added a jump for height, __________ her body in half to reach for her toes, and finally straightened out like an arrow for entry into the water. I think I was actually in a state of __________, because all of a sudden I saw these four steps as achievable.

Then it was my __________. With my heart pounding and knowing I was going to be embarrassed(尴尬的、难堪的)beyond belief, I __________ the board, jumped once and then again to get height, folded for the toe reach, and stretched(伸展)out just as I had pictured in my mind, entering the water straight as a(an)__________.

I received an A for the course. It was __________ to think that I had just learned my first dive.