When you open the fridge, you find some moldy (发霉的) food sometimes. But before you can throw it away, your mother stops you. She doesn’t want to waste food. She cuts off the moldy part and eats the rest. Is it safe to do this?

Mold can grow on almost all kinds of food. Mold is usually green, white, black or grey. Mold makes food soft and changes its color. Moldy food tastes quite bad—and it’s not safe to eat.

If you find mold in soft food, throw it away. Soft food, such as bread, tomatoes or hot dogs, usually holds water. This allows mold to easily grow below its surface. Bacteria (细菌) can also grow along with it.

But it’s easy to remove mold from hard food. The mold can’t grow very deeply inside this kind of food. According to the BBC, you should cut about 2.5 cm around and below the mold to remove it. It’s OK to cut the moldy parts out of hard food and eat the rest. But if the food is completely covered with mold, you should still throw it away.

Most kinds of mold are bad for us. But some kinds of mold can be used to make food. For example, penicillium can be used to make many types of cheeses, such as blue cheese. These cheeses are safe to eat—and they’re quite delicious as well.

My father was born in a small town in the US. He traveled to many cities in the country, before going on to France, Australia and the Philippines. He took his wife and three daughters with him and went wherever the road took him.

It’s easy to feel lonely when you’re on the road. As my mother said repeatedly, “We made lots of new friends on our trip—most of them were mechanics (机械工)”, since we often spent hours in repair shops. But that was better than sitting by the roadside when it was 40 ℃.

Getting along sometimes seemed impossible. There were always a lot of arguments, especially among us back—seat passengers about who had to sit in the middle.

But even if it was hard, we did learn a lot about forgiveness (原谅).

When we were travelling in the Philippines, we drove to Quezon City one day. It should have been a one—hour drive but was nearly three, thanks to bad roads and worse traffic. “Did you put our suitcases (行李箱) in the car?” my father asked my mother as we arrived. From the back seat, we saw her slowly turn toward my father. “No,” she said. “I thought you did.” That was how a seven—hour car trip turned into a 16—hour car trip, which was mostly spent in silence.

In situations like that, we had to learn to let go of our anger because we were stuck in a moving box with the same people for the rest of the journey. Even if I sometimes felt like opening the car door and pushing one of my sisters out, I kept my feelings to myself.

This is why road trips were like mobile universities to us. We got our PHDs (博士学位) in how to get along with other people just by travelling in that old car.

And if we were somehow given a second chance at life, we would do it all over again. Only this time, I’d put the suitcases in the car myself.

What do we really mean by being open? Being open is a kind of invitation to others to come in, to speak and to share.     36    . In this way we will be understood and accepted by others. If we aren’t open with others, we won’t fully believe in ourselves or others.

Here are a few ways for you to be more open. First, make your outside behavior the same as your inside feelings and thoughts. Second,     37    . Third, try to change your question into statements (陈述) and talk in the first person so that people will understand you more easily. Finally, try not to say, “I don’t know.” This usually means “I don’t want to think about it any more.”

    38    . You may want to be more open with close friends, but not with people you don’t know well. This is because you’re not sure how someone else will use what they know about you.     39    . If we say everything we think and feel, they will feel very uncomfortable.

In all,     40    , but we’d better keep the balance (平衡) between being open and being too open.