Jeremy Hampden has a large circle of friends and is very popular at parties. Everybody admires him for his great sense of humor — everybody, that is, except his six-year-old daughter, Jenny. Recently, one of Jeremy’s closest friends asked him to make a speech at a wedding reception. This is the sort of thing that Jeremy loves. He prepared the speech carefully and went to the wedding with Jenny. He had included a large number of funny stories in the speech and, of course, it was a great success. But as soon as he had finished, Jenny said to him, “Daddy, I don’t want to stay here any longer, even one more minute! Daddy, let’s go home.” Jeremy was a little disappointed by this but he did as his daughter asked.

On the way home, there was a long silence between them.

Many organ transplants (器官移植) come from those who are blood relatives or close friends. It’s rare for a person to make a living organ donation to a stranger. Not surprising when you consider the operative risks and other potential problems.

That’s what Paul Wagner thought until he read an article about matchingdonors.com, a website that connects people who need transplants with those willing to be donors (捐赠者), Paul grew up in a poor family and admits to making many mistakes in his youth, including using drugs. “But I always got another chance,” he said. Paul said help came when he needed it most, and because of that, he wanted to give someone else a chance.

That someone turned out to be former opera singer Gail Tomas, who was suffering from kidney (肾) failure and badly needed a new kidney. But her hopes for a donor were so slight because of her O⁺ blood type. Paul, also type O⁺, emailed Gail, offering to donate his kidney to her. He said, “It would be wrong of me not to help.” That attitude, however, was not shared by most surgeons, who refused to participate. The surgeon who agreed only did so after long interviews with Paul to be certain about his motivation. The transplant finally took place on National Donor Day.

Afraid that Gail and her family would feel tied to him merely out of appreciation, Paul made it clear to Gail that he didn’t want to get to know her. But Gail insisted on making friends with him and was trying to find an opportunity to break down the barriers to their friendship.

Then Gail’s first birthday after the transplant was approaching and she got an idea.

Their friendship started after the birthday party.

It was a Sunday morning. Betty woke up earlier than usual. She couldn’t sleep any longer because she was so excited that her uncle Mark was taking her to the beach. She had always loved going surfing with her uncle. She put her swimming suit on and took her bag quickly that she had prepared the night before and went outside to wait. She jumped up and down with joy when she saw her uncle’s red jeep turn the corner down her street.

Uncle Mark got out of the car and helped Betty get in. “Are you ready?” he asked. “Yes!” replied Betty. Uncle Mark could see the excitement in her face. Suddenly he said seriously, “well, before we go, I have to let you know that a shark appeared recently where we’re going to surf today.” Scared and shocked, Betty couldn’t say a word. “Haha! I’m kidding you, “Uncle Mark burst out laughing. Betty laughed too. She knew Uncle Mark liked teasing others. “Let’s go and have some breakfast, I know just the place,” Uncle Mark said. They went to a breakfast shop and ate some tacos (炸玉米饼).

After breakfast the two of them went down to Pacific Beach and got their surfboards ready. “First you have to wax (打蜡) the bottom,” explained Uncle Mark. “I know. I’ve watched you do it before!” Betty said as she took the wax from Uncle Mark’s hand. It took about 15 minutes to wax the bottom of their boards. When Betty finished, Uncle Mark looked it over to make sure it was done well. “Nice job, Betty, you wax your board like a true surfer.”

Finally, they were ready to get into the water. They carried their boards down to the beach and went out into the water. Betty was overly excited and tried to rush to catch a wave. Predictably, she crashed and had to start over. Next was her uncle’s turn. He stood up on his first try and smoothly surfed the wave before jumping into the water. Betty cheered for her uncle’s perfect run.

All of a sudden, Betty felt something touching the bottom of her foot.

“Help! Help!” Betty screamed in horror.

A friend of mine whose name was John Smith had a bad memory, which made him famous. He was so forgetful that he sometimes forgot what he was talking about in the middle of a sentence. His wife had to constantly remind him about his meetings, his classes — even his meals! Once he forgot he had eaten breakfast twice, at home and at school. His wife liked to remind her neighbours, “If John didn’t have his head tied on, he would forget that too!” Since Smith was a professor at a well-known university, his forgetfulness was often an embarrassment to him. It wasn’t that he was not clever, as some critical people tended to say, but just very absent-minded.

One hot summer day, Professor Smith decided to take his children to a seaside town about a three-hour train ride away. To make the trip more interesting for his young children, he kept the name of the town a secret. However, by the time they arrived at the station, Smith forgot the name of the town he was planning to visit. Luckily, a friend of his happened to be in the station. He offered to take care of the children while Smith hurried back home to find out where he was going.

The professor’s wife was surprised to see him again so soon.

“Oh, my dear, I forget the name of the town.”

“What? You forget the name? Maybe one day you will forget my name! Now I’ll write the name of that town on a piece of paper, and you put it in your pocket and please, please don’t forget where you put it.”

Satisfied that she had solved the problem, she sent her husband off again. Ten minutes later she was astonished to see him outside the house for the third time.

6 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写一段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。续写的词数应为90左右。

“Hey! Are you a girl or a duck?” I ignored (忽视) the comments because I knew they were from the mean girl, Betsy. I ran to my class, causing my slight limp (跛行) to become even more apparent. Already, I could see that things would be different here. At my old school, I had a group of friends to protect me. However, in this new school, I was on my own. I was grateful for alphabetic (字母的) seating. My last name came at the beginning of the alphabet and Betsy’s last name came at the end. As the weeks went on, though, I made friends with two girls named Fran and Lisa who sat near me in class. Whenever Betsy made one of her remarks, they would wave it aside and tell me to ignore her.

One day, our teacher asked us to change seats to make some new friends. As she assigned the new seating, Fran, Lisa, and I looked at each other and waited for our names to be called. We didn’t want to be separated. And we especially didn’t want to sit anywhere near Betsy. Finally, Betsy sat directly behind me.

I knew this wasn’t going to be good. Betsy often leaned forward and said: “Quack, quack!” When I ignored her, she kicked my seat. This went on daily until one morning I simply refused to go to school. I told Mum what had happened at school.

My mother sat me down and began to talk.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kindness is everywhere in our life. Some of us are just thankful and some help a lot.

When browsing WeChat or other apps, there must be a few people asking for help like “Oh, I forgot to bring my book back. Can you take a picture of the text?” It’s nothing at all for us to do more than lifting a finger, but most times, many people choose to turn off their phones or pretend that they didn't see the note. There will be somebody who answers him somehow, but he doesn’t need to be me. Thinking of that, we won't be sorry for him.

But when we’re really in need, it’s such a kindness of him to reply quickly.

It was a beautiful sunny spring day. I had just finished driving my daughter to the airport to catch an early morning flight. My sons and I then went to a fast food restaurant for breakfast before heading back home. After eating we all got into the car and pulled out of the parking lot.

The restaurant was at the very top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill was a stop sign so we found ourselves at the end of a long line of waiting traffic while the cars at the bottom turned onto the main road one at a time.

As I looked down to the bottom of the hill my eyes saw an elderly man standing by the stop sign. His clothes were old and worn. He held a cardboard sign with the words “Need Help Please!” written on it.

My heart went out to him and I imagined myself in his situation.

As car after car turned onto the road without stopping for him, I reached for my wallet to look for whatever cash that was left in it.