Goes Around, Comes Around

One day a man saw an old lady standing on the roadside. Even in the weak light of day, he could see she needed help. So he pulled up in front of her car and got out.

Even with the smile on his face, she was worried. No one had stopped to help for the last hour. She looked poor and hungry. He could see that she was frightened. He said, “I’m here to help you, madam. Why don’t you wait in the car where it’s warm? By the way, my name is Bryan Anderson.”

Well, all she had was a flat tire, but for an old lady, that was bad enough. Bryan went under the car looking for a place to put the jack（千斤顶）. Soon he was able to change the tire. As he was finishing, she rolled down the window and told him that she couldn’t thank him enough. Then she asked how much she owed him. Bryan just smiled. He never thought twice about being paid. This was helping someone in need, and there were plenty, who had given him a hand in the past. He had lived his whole life that way.

He told her that if she really wanted to pay him back, the next time she saw someone who needed help, she could give that person the assistance they needed. It had been a cold and depressing day, but he felt good as he headed for home.

A few miles down the road the lady saw a small cafe. She went in to grab a bite to eat, and warn herself up before making the last leg of her trip home. The waitress came over and brought a clean towel（毛巾）to wipe her wet hair. She had a sweet smile, though she had been on her feet for a whole day. The lady noticed she was nearly eight months pregnant（怀孕的）, but she never let the tension and aches change her attitude. The lady wondered how someone who had so little could be so giving to a stranger. Then she remembered Bryan.

Carter enjoyed riding the school bus home. The ride home gave him some time to relax after a busy day of fifth grade. He usually sat alone and enjoyed that too. With four siblings (兄妹) he didn't get much time alone. Sometimes he sat with his younger brother, Jackson, but Jackson was sick at home today.

The bus stopped and the tallest boy in his class, Dexter, stepped off followed by his younger brother, Billy. As the bus pulled away, Carter looked back over his shoulder to watch the boys. Dexter was yelling and waving his hands at his little brother. Billy said something Carter could not hear. Dexter yelled, gave his younger brother a hard shove and knocked him to the ground. Billy was on the ground wiping at his eyes, but Dexter walked away.

Carter turned in his seat, feeling disgusted. He hated seeing little kids get picked on (欺负).The sight of Billy on the ground crying was burned into his memory. He tried to think of something else.

He thought of the model car he was working on at home, a 1967 Corvette. He started building it over a week ago and just finished putting it together last night. Tonight, as soon as he finished his homework, he could start painting the car. That was his favorite part. He already had the perfect color of blue picked out.

He hurried off the bus, ran through his yard, and breezed through the kitchen with a quick hello to his mom. She was making spaghetti, which smelled delicious. He ran up the stairs two at a time and rushed into his room.

“Surprise!” his brother Jackson said, throwing his arms into the air. "What are you doing in my room? I thought you were sick!”

“I feel better!^”

"What's on your face? Are you bleeding?"

"No! I'm not bleeding." Jackson wiped at his face, probably just paint. Look! Look what I did!” He pointed at the desk in the comer of Carter's room.

Mom was born in a small village, which is famous for paper-folding art, and Mom learnt how to make paper animals. In 1967, Mom went to Hong Kong, where she met Dad. They went to the suburbs of Connecticut later. Not knowing English, she was lonely until I was born.

When I was young, Mom liked to make paper animals for me. She folded up the paper, then lifted the paper packet to her mouth and blew into it. There in her hands was a little paper tiger. It seemed that the little tiger shared her breath. This was her magic. At my request, Mom also made a goat, a deer and even a shark.

Mark, one of the neighborhood boys, came over with his Star Wars action figure. I brought out the paper tiger. Mark examined the wrapping-paper pattern of the tiger’s skin. "That doesn’t look like a tiger. Is it a toy? ""I had never thought of that. But looking at it, it was really just a piece of wrapping paper.

Later, Dad bought me a full set of Wars action figures. I packed the paper animals in a shoebox and put them into the comer of the attic(阁楼). Once in a while, I would see Mom at the kitchen table making new paper animals. I caught them, pressed and then put them away in the box in the attic.

Mom was also trying to learn to speak English, but her accent and broken sentences embarrassed me. I tried to correct her. but in vain. Eventually. I stopped talking with her. For years, I paid no attention to Mom until one day my Dad called and told me that Mom was in hospital. Dad and I stood, one on each side of Mom. She turned to me, " Jack, just keep that box with you, and you will find it so important. "

She died several days later. Dad aged raw after that. The house was too big for him and had to be sold. My girlfriend Susan and I went to help him pack and clean the place.

The story between Mr. Jordan and me was the most amazing story I wanted to share. Mr. Jordan was one of the teachers who I would never forget.

When I was young at school, I loved talking, a characteristic not always appreciated by Mr. Jordan, my 10-grade English teacher.

Mr. Jordan was a teacher whom no one liked because he was too strict. He stood about 5-foot-five, was very thin and wore his hair pulled back in a way that gave him a horsy look. He wore those half-circular reading glasses. Whenever he got upset, he would lower his head and look at you over the top of his glasses.

One day in his class I was busy talking. I didn’t realize he had stopped teaching and staring straight at me. “Sam, I would like to see you after school.”

Later Mr. Jordan explained in a low, but very firm voice that showed he expected me to listen when he was talking. For punishment he told me to write a thousand-word essay on education and its effect on the society. He wanted it in by the following Wednesday.

Well, I met my deadline. I was confident. It was a good paper. And I expected a sign of approval from him. The next day in class, however, he was looking at me over his glasses. He called me forward and returned my paper. “Go back and rewrite，” he said. “Remember, each paragraph is supported to begin with a topic sentence.” When he gave my paper back a second time, he corrected the grammar. The third time, the spelling. The fourth time, it was punctuation. The fifth, it wasn’t neat enough. I was sick!

The sixth time, I rewrote the whole paper slowly in ink, leaving generous space. When he saw it, he removed his glasses and smiled. He firmly accepted the paper. After that, I put the whole thing out of my mind.

One day after two weeks, Mr. Jordan came into the class and said，

I was amazed, thrilled and grateful.

At first glance she looked like any other old woman, plodding along in the snow ,alone,neglected,head bowed. A   young couple, smiling,taking,laughing, arms loaded with Christmas presents,took no notice of the old woman. A mother with two small children hurried by, on their way to grandmother’s house. Like many others, they took no notice,either. If these people had noticed,they would have seen that the old woman wore no shoes. She walked bare foot in the ice and snow.

With both hands the old woman gathered her worn button-less overcoat at the collar to keep out the wind. She stopped and stood bent and bowed at the bus stop.A red and blue scarf covering her head, she waited for the downtown bus.

A gentleman carrying an Important looking briefcase waited near her,not too closely.After all,she could have something contagious (传染的）. A teenage girl also waited for the bus,She glanced repeatedly at the old woman's feet, but said nothing.

The bus arrived and the old woman slowly, painfully boarded.She sat on the sideways sent Just behind the driver.The gentleman and the teenage girl hurried to the back of the bus.A little boy pointed at the old woman,"Look,Mother,that old lady is bare foot."The embarrassed mother slapped his hand down. "Don't point at people, Andrew. I's not polite to point." She looked out of the window.

＂She must have sons or daughters," a lady in a fur coat suggested, “her children should be ashamed of themselves." She felt morally superior,because she took good care of her mother.

A man seated near the middle of the bus steadied the bag of gifts on her lap. "Don't we pay enough taxes to handle situations like this?" he said to a friend seated beside him.

“People have to learn to save their money," a well-dressed young college man added. “If that old woman had saved when she was young, she wouldn't be suffering now. It's her own fault."

And all these vain(虚荣的）people beamed with satisfaction that they had all given such deep analysis,totally ignoring the old woman who badly needed a pair of shoes immediately.

A vain businessman felt offended by those talking without acting and reached into his wallet.

At the next stop.a young man wearing expensive.new.brand-name shoes boarded the bus,

For a long time, I had been looking for a piano of my own to practise on. There was a piano shop on the street along which I walked every day to school. Whenever I passed the shop, I would stop, looking at the beautiful piano standing in the comer of the shop window. How I had been dreaming, day and night to possess a piano like that!

Unfortunately, my father was just a clerk. Times were tough during the Depression, and there were five mouths to feed, besides buying coal and wood for the stove. In order to save money, even on cold winter days, my father would walk the seven miles every day to get to work. No he could never afford to buy me an expensive piano. Though he knew I wanted to play that piano so much» buying it was an extravagance (奢侈品) well beyond our family’s income.

One day after school, I went as usual to the shop window to look at the piano. However, to my surprise and disappointment, the piano had gone. I should not have been surprised as others had the right to buy it, if they could afford to. Tears filled my eyes when I thought of not being able to sec that piano any more.

Disappointed, helpless and sad, I wandered aimlessly up and down the street. After about an hour. I returned home. I had just entered into our house, when I heard my mother calling me. I brushed away my tears and followed the sound of her voice into the dining-room.

I could not believe my eyes.

As soon as my father appeared, I hugged him tightly.

Monty Roberts owns a horse ranch in San Francisco. He is willing to help the young who want to pursue their dreams. We were always curious about the reason behind and one day he told us his story.

When Monty was young, he was the son of an itinerant horse trainer who would go from stable to stable, race track to race track, farm to farm and ranch to ranch, training horses. As a result, his high school career was continually interrupted. When he was a senior, he was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to be and do when he grew up.

That night he wrote a seven-page paper describing the goal of owning a horse ranch some day. He wrote about his dream in great detail and he even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, showing the location of all the buildings, the stables and the tracks. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a 4,000-square-foot house that would sit on a 200-acre dream ranch.

He put a great deal of his heart into the project and the next day he handed it in to the teacher. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front was a large red F with a note that read, "See me after class." The boy with the dream went to see the teacher after class and asked, "Why did I receive an F?"

The teacher said, "This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You have no money. You come from an itinerant family. You have no resources. Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money. You have to buy the land. You have to pay for the original breeding stock and later you'll have to pay large stud (马群) fees. There's no way you could ever do it." Then the teacher added, "If you rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade."

The boy went home and thought about it long and hard.

Twenty years later, the teacher brought 30 students to camp out on a ranch for a week.

During this past year, I’ve had three instances of car trouble. Each time these things happened, I was sick of the way most people hadn’t bothered to help. One of those times, I was on the side of the road for close to three hours with my big Jeep. I put signs in the windows, big signs that said NEED A JACK (千斤顶), and offered money. Nothing. Right as I was about to give up, a Mexican family in a small truck pulled over, and the father bounded out.

He sized up the situation and called for his daughter, who spoke English. He conveyed through her that he had a jack but that it was too small for the Jeep, so we would need something to support it. Then he got a saw (锯子) from the truck and cut a section out of a big log on the side of the road. We rolled it over and put his jack on top, and we were in business.

I started taking the wheel off, and then, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. No worries: He handed it to his wife, and she was gone in a flash down the road to buy a new tire iron. She was back in 15 minutes. We finished the job, and I was a very happy man.

The two of us were dirty and sweaty. His wife prepared a pot of water for us to wash our hands. I tried to put a $20 bill in the man’s hand, but he wouldn’t take it, so instead I went up to the truck and gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I asked the little girl where they lived. Mexico, she said. They were in Oregon so Mommy and Daddy could work on a fruit farm for the next few weeks. Then they would go home.

When I was about to say goodbye, the girl asked if I’d had lunch.

After they left, I got into my Jeep and opened the paper bag.