1 . My son Joey was born with club feet (足内翻). The doctors _______ us that with treatment he would be able to walk _______ — but would never _______ very well. The first three years of his life were spent in surgery, casts and braces._______ the time he was eight, you wouldn’t know he had a problem when you saw him walk.

In seventh grade he decided to _______ for the cross-country team. Every day he _______ with the team. He worked harder and ran more than any of the others — perhaps he _______ that the abilities that seemed to come _______ to so many others did not come naturally to him. Although the _______ team runs, only the top seven runners have the ________ to score points for the school. We didn’t tell him he probably would never ________ the team, so he didn’t know.

He ________ to run four to five miles a day, every day — ________ the day he had a 103-degree fever. I was ________, so I went to look for him after school. I found him running all   ________. I asked him how he felt. “Okay,” he said. He had two more miles to go. The ________ ran down his face and his eyes were glassy from his ________. Yet he looked straight ahead and kept running.

Two weeks ________ , the names of the team runners were called. Joey was number six on the list. Joey had made the team. We never told him he shouldn’t ________ to make the team. We never told him he couldn’t do it...so he didn’t know. He just ________ it.

3 . From childhood, Diane loved to write. Throughout school she_______ writing, but pursuing it_______ was never a possibility. Her father was a doctor, her mother was a nurse. “Medicine was a fairly_______ option,” Diane says. “And writing was a career where it wasn’t a _______ that you’d have high income.”

She became a doctor but still wanted to do some writing. However, being a doctor was so_______ that she didn’t take up writing until her thirties. She_______ a novel—a fictionalized version of her travels in China after university. She got excellent_______ . Diane sent it off to as many agents as she could find, and found one who wanted to _______ her. Suddenly, it seemed she was on her _______  as an author.

“I had one lengthy phone call with the agent where we ________all possible areas she thought needed ________. I worked on those and sent it back to her but didn’t hear anything.” It was not long ________ Diane found another agent who was________ if she was willing to rewrite it from the first person to the third person. She did the hard work and sent it off again. “I got back a really brief letter: ‘Thank you, I’m no longer interested.’ It was really________.”

A decade went by, and Diane found herself itching to write again, this time ________ for her own enjoyment. She ________ herself the challenge of creating a thriller and chose Western Australia as her setting.

As she was writing just for herself, something surprising began to happen. “The characters________ a life of their own; they started doing things I hadn’t thought about. It just________ out.” One day, an agent called from Australia. Three weeks later, Diane had a publication deal. Her novel Cicada was published in March.

“________ it hadn’t been published, I still gained so much from the________ ,” says Diane.

5 . Last Christmas while staying with my parents, I _______ upon some old love letters that my parents wrote to each other. These letters were all piled up in a basket, dirty and _______. Deciding to read and _______ them, I asked them if I could take the letters back to my Illinois home. They agreed.

As I opened each letter, all of them delicate with _______, I discovered a new page _______ unknown to me in this private _______ of my parents’ lives.

My father used to _______ in the army. So his letters were full of frontline _______ of the things about the war. Each of my mother’s letters was sealed with her 1944 magenta (紫红色的) lipstick kiss. I was _______ to these letters like a magnet (磁铁).

Just six weeks after our Christmas visit, Daddy became very ill and was hospitalized. This time, he was fighting a ________ kind of war. As I sat by his bedside, we discussed the ________. He told me how much receiving those lipstick-kissed letters had ________ to him when he had been so far from home.

It so happened that the next day would be February 14. I chose from the ________ letters the card my father had sent Mother in 1944 and brought it to my father’s bedside.

At his bedside, I joked with him, saying ________, “Today is Valentine’s Day, and I know you have been a little busy lately, but I’ve got you ________.” He became more ________ when I handed him the old ________. He carefully opened the card, and when he recognized it, his eyes filled with tears.

My father, in a voice tight with ________, read the loving ________ he’d sent to my mother fifty-six years earlier. And this time, he could read it to her ________.

8 . I used to hate being called upon in class mainly because I didn’t like attention drawn to myself. And _______ otherwise assigned（指定）a seat by the teacher, I always _______ to sit at the back of the classroom.

All this _______ after I joined a sports team. It began when a teacher suggested I try out for the basketball team. At first I thought it was a crazy _________ because I didn’t have a good sense of balance, nor did I have the _______ to keep pace with the others on the team and they would tease me. But for the teacher who kept insisting on my “_______ for it”, I wouldn’t have decided to give a try.

Getting up the courage to go to the tryouts was only the _______ of it! When I first started _______ the practice sessions, I didn’t even know the rules of the game, much _______ what I was doing. Sometimes I’d get __________ and take a shot at the wrong direction—which made me feel really stupid. __________ , I wasn’t the only one “new” at the game, so I decided to __________ on learning the game, do my best at each practice session, and not be too hard on myself for the things I didn’t __________“just yet”.

I practiced and practiced. Soon I knew the ________ and the “moves”. Being part of a team was fun and motivating. Very soon the competitive ________ in me was winning over my lack of confidence. With time, I learned how to play and made friends in the __________ — friends who respect my efforts to work hard and be a team player. I never had so much fun!

With my __________ self-confidence comes more praise from teachers and classmates. I have gone from ________ in the back of the classroom and not wanting to call attention to myself, ________ raising my hand—even when I sometimes wasn’t and not 100 percent __________ I had the right answer. Now I have more self-confidence in myself.

9 . An old car, a few dollars in the pocket, and a sense of adventure. That’s all Tony and Maureen Wheeler needed for the _________ of a lifetime. They met on a park bench in Regent’s Park and

_________ a year later. For their honeymoon, they decided to try what few people thought _________—crossing Europe and Asia overland, all the way to Australia. It took them several months and all the money they could earn or borrow, but they _________.

It was too amazing an experience to _________ themselves. _________ by their friends, they stayed up nights writing their very first travel guide “Across Asia on the Cheap”. Within a week they’d _________ 1,500 copies and Lonely Planet was born. The name _________ a misheard line in the song “Space Captain”. The _________ words are “lovely planet”, but Tony Wheeler heard “lonely planet” and liked it.

Lonely Planet has gone on to __________ the world’s largest and most successful travel publisher, __________ over 100 million books. Lonely Planet enables curious __________ to experience the world and get to the heart of a place through guidebooks and almost every place on the planet.

“There’s a whole world of amazing sights, hotels and travel companies out there—and we want to tell you which ones we __________ are best. But we never use our opinions for money. If you __________ something written by a Lonely Planet author, you can be __________ they’ve been there, had a look themselves and are __________ you what they really think. It’s trusted advice from a __________ source,” says Tony.

Tony and Maureen are continuing to travel and devote much of their spare time to __________ projects, providing support for people in need. And the __________ is still driven by the idea in “Across Asia on the Cheap”: “What you’ve got to __________ is decide to go and the hardest part is over. So go!”

10 . When I was born there was already another youngster in the family-a collie dog just three months old.

Laddie _________ near me, ate with me and played with me. I _________ dressed him in my clothes. We _________ almost everything and we hugged each other for comfort and _________ .I had no brothers or sisters, so he was my brother. When I left for _________ he watched me from the window and on my return ran _________ to the door, his face lighting up with pleasure and love. We were _________ .

Years passed and sores(疮) _________ on his back and a growth(赘生物)on his lower lip. I thought a vet and _________ would cure him.

When I returned from school one day and opened the __________ , there was no Laddie. Believing he was playing "hide-and-seek”, I searched all his favorite __________ places. Meanwhile my parents were trying to __________ me, but I was not listening, I was searching and calling madly for my __________.

The blow was more than I could bear, and as a result I was __________ and off school for many weeks, suffering from extreme sadness.

Many years passed before I got a dog of my own. He was my son's __________ .The two would get up to all kinds of mischief(顽皮).When Yogi's __________ came we all went with him to the vet's and hugged him, petted him and __________ him for his company and love. That way it __________ the blow for us.

The loss of a(n) __________ is heartbreaking, but we have the option of providing that final release with dignity and avoiding __________. It’s what must be done.