Two things changed my life: my mother and a bike basket. It’s true. I would be a different person if my mom hadn’t turned a bike basket into a life lesson I carry with me today—a lesson about the value of efforts.
My mother and father were united in their way of raising children, but it mostly fell to my mother to actually carry it out. Looking back, I honestly don’t know how she did it. Managing the family budget must have been a very hard task, but she made it look effortless. If we complained about not having what other kids owned, we’d hear something like, “I don’t care what so-and-so got for his birthday. You are not getting a TV in your room or a big party.” We had to earn our allowance (零用钱) by doing chores (家庭杂务) around the house. I can still remember how long it took to polish the legs of our coffee table. My brothers can no doubt remember hours spent cleaning the house. We had to keep track of our belongings, and if something was lost, it was not replaced.
It was one summer day. My mother drove me to the bike shop to get a tire fixed—and there it was in the window—white, shiny, plastic and decorated with flowers: The basket winked at me and I knew—I had to have it.
“It’s beautiful,” my mother said when I pointed it out to her. “What a neat basket.”
I tried to hold off at first, but then I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Mom, please can I get it? I’ll do anything, please, Mom, please?” I was desperate.
“You know,” she said, gently rubbing my back while we both stared at what I believed was the coolest thing ever, “if you save up, you could buy this yourself.”
“By the time I have earned enough, it’ll have gone! Someone else will buy it. Please, Mom, please?”
“There might be another way,” she said.
注意:
1.续写词数应为 150 左右；
2.请按如下格式作答。
“I’ll buy it now but you only get it after 3 weeks of double chores,” Mom explained.
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Finally, I got my dream basket, but soon I sadly found the same basket on others’ bikes!
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One of my teachers once asked my class what our favorite memory was. My answer, however, invited giggles and hesitant smiles. Why? Because I felt the best when I first learned how to ride my bike-at thirteen. I didn’t mind my classmate’s stares and laughter, because I knew there was more to the story.
My sister and I shared a typical sisterly relationship: We couldn’t stand each other. Or, to be honest, she couldn’t stand me. I admired her. Her personality was the definition of cool. My clothes were mysteriously inclined to look like hers, and even my words tended to mimic(模仿) those I heard from home. Many times, I even wanted to literally follow my sister, crying every time I was banned from attending movies with her. Needless to say, I was a brat (淘气鬼) and an annoyance to her. Any sort of conversation we had was usually reduced to fighting, and try as might, my sister had an extra six years worth of insulting (侮辱的) vocabulary (which meant she usually won). After a while, I stopped trying to impress her and learned to be totally indifferent; perhaps the silent treatment would get more approval. I was wrong. We soon fell into a sad pattern-I avoided her, she ignored me, and deep inside, it hurt. So that’s how it was between us. Indifferent or hostile (敌对 的), she was only a sister in name. I truly believed that we would forever be apart, two housemates without conversation, two strangers without warmth. And nothing more.
I still remember the day I learned to ride a bike. I had received the bike that day, which was great, until I realized I had no idea how to ride it. My mom had long abandoned any attempt to teach me; I had proved to be a panicky, frustrating student.
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 couldn’t ride my bike, and on that day, it was no different.
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My sister never once let me fall.
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I’ve always considered art to be “my thing”, the area where hours transform into the graceful dance of brushes on papers. It was a simple day. I finished my other classes before going to my favorite class-art. My teacher, a beautiful woman who always smiled, assigned our final task of the year: finish a self-portrait (自画像). I hadn’t done one since second grade. This was going to be an interesting challenge.
I looked through my photo albums as soon as I returned home. The first picture I found was me in 7th grade. Hmm. My teeth looked a little strange. The next picture was me with my friend. Ugh, there was a giant dot on my cheek. The third picture was me with my little sister. What was my hair doing? I decided I couldn’t use any of these photographs.
I went to my room and pulled up my mirror, face-to-face with my reflection. I started with the outline. First, I captured (捕捉) the shape of my face. I settled on some odd mixture between oval (椭圆) and circular (圆). Then, I continued sketching (素描) the eyes, nose, mouth, ears and finally my hair. The outline took a while because I wanted it to be beautiful. Then I worked on the actual painting process for a few days, making sure every detail was perfect. Finally, I finished it a week early.
I presented it to my teacher, who looked over it and sighed, “But we need to discuss the...”
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。
After arriving home, I looked in the mirror again.
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When I submitted the updated portrait, my teacher smiled and proposed to show it at an exhibition.
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The day of our diving (跳水) test had arrived, filling me with fear. While our parents considered it fortunate for us to have access to an Olympic-size swimming pool at school, I couldn’t find any happiness in that thought. Instead, the swimming pool terrified me, mainly because of my extreme shyness.
I was so shy that I always sat at the back of the room in class to avoid being called upon to read. During our physical education class on Monday mornings, I would make my way to the back of the line forming at the diving board, hoping to escape practicing the dives.
Now, it was yet another Monday morning —the morning of our diving test. My heart sank as Ms. Robbins, our teacher, announced that our final grade would be determined by our performance of the most difficult dive —the jackknife. And she added, “This diving is important. Those who fail will have to spare time in the following Monday mornings to practice diving in this pool and retake the test.”
My body trembled with fear as the line to the scary diving board shortened. As I watched, each student seemed to perform the challenging dive effortlessly. Soon, I would have to attempt something that I had never even practiced before.
Then I recalled someone telling me that when you picture yourself doing a skill over and over again, it’s just as effective as physically practicing that skill. Encouraged by this thought, I watched carefully as each classmate leapt off the board, added a jump for height, folded their body in half to reach for their toes, and finally straightened out like an arrow for going into the water. After careful observation, I was actually in a state of surprise, because all of a sudden I realized that it was possible for me to perform these four steps of diving. Eventually, all my classmates completed their jump except me.
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Then I heard the teacher declare, “It’s your turn.”
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Knowing I failed, I climbed out of the pool, embarrassed.
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In early 2017, Kevin Duke started thinking about his beloved daughter’s very special upcoming birthday. Like every parent, he wanted to gift his daughter with a truly perfect present, one that she would really appreciate and could enjoy for a long time. He eventually settled on a second hand car.
This Duke purchased the car a few weeks ahead of his little girl’s 16th birthday. This meant he had plenty of time to give it a good thorough cleaning and fix-up, and make sure it worked perfectly. But when he did clean-up, he suddenly noticed something that grabbed his attention immediately.
It was a small envelope which said “New Car Owner: Important Info Inside” letter was from Archey and it began simply enough: “To the person that gets this car,” “I just wanted to let you know what a special vehicle you’ve bought.” As the letter went on, the tragic circumstances around the car’s previous owner began to unfold. “This car belonged to my mom, but she passed away in a house fire along with my 6-year-olddaughter.”
“We took road trips and listened to country music with the windows open,” she recalled in the heartfelt letter. “Love, joy, and adventures were all we had in this car,” she wrote. “Now that it’s yours, please remember it isn’t just a car. It’s a memory. It’s really heartbreaking to part with it, but I have to. Finance permitting, I dream one day of being able to buy it back. So please be nice to it…”
Despite the great tragedy she had been through, all Archey wanted, as the letter reveals, was for the new owner to experience the same happiness that she had so cherished in the past. As Duke sat in the car reading this mysterious letter, his eyes began to fill with tears. It soon became clear that it wouldn’t be enough simply to treat this car with love.
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He had to do something—and he knew exactly what.
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Quickly, the post online spread widely.
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For my fourteenth birthday, my mom offered to take me and my several friends to the city nearest our small town to visit a mall, go shopping, eat pizza in the food court, and then catch a movie. Afterward, we would all return to my house for a party. It was just the kind of celebration that a teenage girl expected.
When it was time to climb aboard the bus and ride together to my home out in the country, Nora didn’t show up. I felt confused. Then I felt mad. Why didn’t she tell me she couldn’t make it? Why would she tell me she’d come to the party and then back out without letting me know? I decided to call Nora and get some answers.
Nora explained that she’d had to stay home from school because she had gotten sick. She couldn’t ride the bus home with me and my other friends or join us at the shopping mall for food-court pizza and a movie because she had been too sick to come to school.
Nora began crying on the phone, hurt and surprised that I was angry with her. Moments later, her mother called back. Angrily, she told me how much I’d hurt her daughter, how much Nora had wanted to join us, and that she had been the one to change Nora’s plans when she didn’t allow her to go to school sick that day.
I seldom gave Nora or her absence from our festivities another thought. At school on Monday, I found it easy to avoid her since she and I had no classes together. For the rest of the school year, we seldom spoke, and I forgot about my hurtful call with Nora as time went by.
The next year I started at the high school, with twice as many students as my middle school. I made some new friends and kept some old ones. Maybe I glanced at Nora with a small smile once in a while as we passed in the halls, but our friendship had been relegated (使降级) to the past. It happened sometimes, and I shrugged it off (不予理睬).
注意：1.续写词数应150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Years later, Facebook suggested Nora as an online friend for our similarities.
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I wrote an apology letter to Nora.
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【推荐3】阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。
Ada looked through the observation window at the kids below, all waiting in line to get into the pool. She turned to her mother with an angry expression on her face. “Mom, they’re all little kids! I’m 15 already! This is ridiculous, isn’t ?”
“I know, Ada,” replied her mother, “but you’re a beginner, too, and you have to start somewhere!”
Ada had never been to a swimming lesson in her life. Between schoolwork and helping on her grandfather’s farm, she hadn’t had time for lessons. The closest swimming pool Ada had been to was the inflatable (充气的) alligator pool her mother bought her when she was five. Now that Ada was older, her mother had found a new job in the city, and Ada faced a new challenge — school field trips to the local pool.
The first day that Ada went with her class to the pool, she had no idea what she was in for. What could be so difficult about swimming? Ada confidently slipped(溜) into the water and held onto the side of the pool, expecting to be able to touch the bottom with her feet. But when Ada let go of the side of the pool, she slipped under the water—the whole pool was one big deep end! Ada threw her arm toward the side of the pool and grabbed (抓住) the ledge (池壁), out of breath. “I really can’t swim! Everyone’s going to laugh at me!” she thought to herself in a panic.
On the next field trip to the pool, Ada sat on the side of a bench, frozen with fear. She huddled (蜷缩) with a towel over her shoulders, too embarrassed to try again. When she came home, her mother noticed right away that Ada was upset. “Honey, I want you to take Bella’s swimming lessons at the local pool. Soon you’ll learn how to swim just like everyone else,” she convinced Ada, showing photos of Bella with her prize-winning students. Ada felt doubtful whether the lessons would help, but she had to overcome her fear.
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。
Then came the time for Ada to take her first lesson.
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Soon Bella came over to where Ada sat and introduced herself.
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