2 . My earliest memory of dad is grabbing his hand while we walked together. As I _______ older, I remember my father and I listening to basketball games on the radio. I always fell asleep_______ the game was over. When I woke up in the morning the score sheet with the _______ score on it would be lying next to me. I’ll always remember that.

On cold mornings my father would bring his bread truck by the house. I used to ride on the floor of that bread truck as he delivered the bread to the stores. The _______ and the warmth from the bread made my mouth water and kept me warm. I’ll always remember that.

My father would _______ all my games. One night before an important game my father told me _______ that he wouldn’t be able to watch the game because he had to deliver the bread far away. The next day as the game time approached I thought about my dad. I happened to look across the field and _______ saw his bread truck pulling into the stadium. He managed to _______the game. I’ll always remember that.

Years later I had become a teacher. I’ll never forget the voice on the phone early one morning telling me dad had just been _______ in a traffic accident. I could hear my heart beat in my ears. I hung up the phone and went back to my bedroom. After that nothing really ________to me. I still taught in school ________ I couldn’t focus on my teaching. One day I was on the playground ________ a little boy walked up to me and grabbed my hand. His hand held mine the same way I used to hold my father’s by the last two ________. At that moment I found my ________in life again. You see even though my father was gone, he left something with me. He left me his smile, compassion and touch. From that day on I started. I’ll always remember that!

3 . Have you ever wondered why birds sing? Maybe you thought that they were just happy. After all, you probably sing when you are happy.

Some scientists believe that birds do sing some of the time just because they are happy. However, they sing most of the time for a very different reason. Their singing is actually a warning to other birds to stay out of their territory.

Do you know what a “territory” is? A territory is an area that an animal, usually the male, claims (声称) as its own. Only he and his family are welcome there. No other families of the same species are welcome. Your house is your territory where only your family and friends are welcome. If a stranger should enter your territory and threaten you, you might shout. Probably this would be enough to frighten him away.

If so, you have actually frightened the stranger away without having to fight him. A bird does the same thing. But he expects an outsider almost any time, especially at nesting (筑巢) season. So he is screaming all the time, whether he can see an outsider or not. This screaming is what we call a bird’s song, and it is usually enough to keep an outsider away.

6 . When I was a teenager, my dad did everything he could to discourage me from becoming a brewer (酿酒师). He’d spent his life in local breweries, _________ making a living, as had his father and grandfather before him.

So I did as he asked. I went to business school and got a highly paid job at a business- consulting firm. _________, after working there for five years, I was haunted by _________. Is this what I want to be doing when I’m 50?

I remembered that some time before, my dad had been cleaning out the attic and _________ some old beers _________ . “Today’s beer is _________ water that can hold a head,” he’d told me.

I agreed. Americans pay good money for inferior beer, I thought. Why not make good beer for Americans using my family way?

I decided to quit my job to become a brewer. When I told Dad, I was hoping he’d put his arm around me and get _________ about continuing tradition. Instead, he said, “Jim, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”

As much as Dad objected, in the end he became my new company’s first _________, coughing up (支付) $40,000 when I opened the Boston Beer Company in 1984. Going from my fancy office to being a brewer was like mountain climbing: exciting, liberating and _________.All my safety nets were gone.

Once the beer was made, I faced my biggest __________ yet: no one had ever heard of it. I needed a name that was __________ and elegant, so I named my beer __________ Samuel Adams, a brewer and patriot (爱国者) who helped to found the Boston Tea Party.

The only way to get the word out, I realized, was to sell direct. I filled my briefcase with beer and hit every bar in Boston. Six weeks later, at the Great American Beer Festival, Sam Adams Boston Lager won the top prize for American beer. The rest is history. It wasn’t supposed to work out this way — whatever does? — but in the end I was __________ to be a brewer.

My advice to all young entrepreneurs is simple: Life is very short, so don’t __________ to make decisions. Life doesn’t let you __________.

8 . My father had returned from his business visit to London when I came in, rather late, to supper. I could tell at once that he and my mother had been discussing something. In that half-playful, half-serious way I knew so well, he said, “How would you like to go to Eton?”

“You bet,” I cried quickly catching the joke. Everyone knew it was the most expensive, the most famous of schools. You had to be entered at birth, if not before. Besides, even at 12 or 13, I understood my father. He disliked any form of showing off. He always knew his proper station in life, which was in the middle of the middle class, our house was medium-sized; he had avoided joining Royal Liverpool Golf Club and went to a smaller one instead; though once he had got a second-hand Rolls-Royce at a remarkably low price, he felt embarrassed driving it, and quickly changed it for an Austin 1100.

This could only be his delightful way of telling me that the whole boarding school idea was to be dropped. Alas! I should also have remembered that he had a liking for being different from everyone else, if it did not conflict (冲突) with his fear of drawing attention to himself.

It seemed that he had happened to be talking to Graham Brown of the London office, a very nice fellow, and Graham had a friend who had just entered his boy at the school, and while he was in that part of the world he thought he might just as well phone them. I remember my eyes stinging (刺痛) and my hands shaking with the puzzlement of my feelings. There was excitement, at the heart of great sadness.

“Oh, he doesn’t want to go away,” said my mother, “You shouldn’t go on like this.” “It’s up to him,” said my father. “He can make up his own mind.”

9 . To learn to think is to learn to question. Those who don’t question never truly think for themselves. These are simple rules that have governed the advancement of science and human thought. Advancements are made when thinkers question theories (理论) and introduce new ones. Unfortunately, it is often the great and respected thinkers who end up slowing the progress of human thought. Aristotle (亚里士多德) was a brilliant (伟大的) philosopher whose theories explained much of the natural world, often incorrectly. He was so respected by the scientific community that even 1, 200 years after his death, scientists were still trying to build upon his mistakes rather than correct them!

Brilliant minds can intimidate up-and-coming thinkers who are not confident of their abilities. They often believe they are not as good as the minds of giants (巨人) such as Aristotle, leading many to accept current (目前的) ideas instead of questioning them.

I, like many thinkers of the past, once believed in my mental weakness. I didn’t question what was written on those pages. I respected them, and accepted whatever they told me. But that attitude soon changed. My mind’s independence was first developed in the classroom.

A 65-year-old science teacher once told me that light is a type of wave. I confidently believed that light is a wave. One day, however, I heard the German exchange student mention that light could be made up of particles (粒子) . As the others laughed at his statement (陈述) , I started to question my beliefs.

Maybe the teachers and textbooks hadn’t given me the whole story. I went to the library, did some research and learned of the light-as-a-wave vs light-as-a-particle debate. I realized I had gone through life accepting only half of the story as the whole truth.

Each new year brought more new facts, and I had even more questions. I found myself in the library after school, trying to find my own answers to gain a more complete understanding of what I thought I already knew. Even textbooks can be challenged. I learned to question my sources, I learned to be a thinker.

Questions are said to be the path to truth, and I plan to continue questioning. How many things do we know for sure today that we will question in the future? I know nothing can escape the gravity of a black hole. This knowledge may change in the next 20 years. The one thing we can control now is our openness to discovery. Questions are the tools of open minds, and open minds are the key to intellectual (智力的) advancement.