1 . We met in a support group for parents of children with special needs. It was the introduction night, and stories of heartbreak ________ the room as one parent after another discussed their child’s diagnosis and uncertain future, and the ________ that both the children and the parents faced.

I spoke of my developmentally ________ fifteen-month-old daughter, Meredith, who could not yet speak and could barely crawl, ________ walk. One day I left my daughter’s playground in tears after watching her silent ________ to move an inch, while her peers breezed by her, running to and talking about their new discovery. ________ to help my daughter learn to walk and talk, I thought it took precedence（优先）over my career. I decided to step off the ________ leading to management and left my position at a newspaper.

As I ________ out my heart to the support group, there were sympathetic nods and then it was Tonie’s ________. Her daughter, Madison, had ________ speech, and her son, Griffin, had autism（自闭症）. Tonie was the main ________ in her family, with only her state agency job as their primary ________ of support. Yes, as she told her story, she filled it with humor, and it was ________ that somehow she found joy in the sorrow, and ________ from the challenges. I knew I’d found a friend.

Tonie and I began to socialize outside the group, ________ laughter as well as tears, however small, and always concerning trials and successes.

2 . Cameron was a DJ at a radio station in Texas. One night, one of his friends invited him to meet some ________, He didn't have any ________ for autographs (签名), so he took out a dollar bill. Before the night ended, he almost had every star's autograph. He ________ that dollar bill and always carried it with him.

Later, the radio station was closed, and Cameron ________ a part-time job at another station in Fort Worth. One morning, as Cameron ________ the radio station, he saw a man sitting in an old car in the parking lot. When he went   ________ to work that night, he noticed the car parking in the ________ place. The fellow in it always ________ to him. As Cameron walked near the car the next morning, the man rolled his window down. He said he had been here for days with no ________. He drove to Fort Worth to take a job, but he arrived three days early and ________ go to work right away. Then he asked if he might ________ a little money fora snack. Cameron had no money to lend him, and ________ had gas to get home. Then he remembered that dollar bill. He ________ for a while, pulled his wallet out and studied the bill. Then he gave it to him. “Somebody has ________ all over this,” said the man, who didn't ________ that the writing was dozens of autographs.

That morning Cameron returned home trying not to ________ it. Just then the phone rang. A company wanted him to do a commercial (商业广告) that paid him $ 500. In the next few days more ________ came to him out of nowhere. Things improved greatly for Cameron, which all ________ that morning in the parking lot, when he ________ with that dollar bill.

Cameron never saw the man again. ________ the guy was a beggar or an angel doesn't matter. Cameron was tested that cold morning and he passed.

3 . When I was a young boy I was living in a poor neighborhood as a foster （代养的） child. I would often _________ to help clean a yard or wash some walls _________ some pocket money just to buy some clothes or candy.

Once I knocked on the door of an elderly woman and asked if she needed her yard cleaned. She asked why I was not in school and I _________ her my torn trousers and _________shoes. And when I finished the work, she gave me some _________ . She said, “I want you to buy some trousers and new shoes and _________ school. I also want you to come back and _________ me with your report card and I will _________ you when I see you have worked hard and have some good marks.”

I returned several times to see the woman and she did just as she _________ . She looked at my report card and gave me a handful of dollars and a sandwich every time I __________showed her I had an "A" or "B”. And over the next years she continued to be this __________influence in my life but I __________ knew her name.

Later, I moved from that neighborhood into a different home. I will of course never __________ the huge difference this wonderful __________ made over my life with her __________ ； this is something I hope to do myself in this lifetime over and over again.

4 . "Stocking up for Winter?" said the cashier with a smile, looking at my shopping cart (推车) which was full of toaster pastries and big boxes of cereal. I knew that _________ was coming.

Earlier I had _________ by at the local food pantry (食物分发处) to see if there was any small thing that I might _________. The shelves _________ canned vegetables, canned tuna fish, cheese, and many other things. They were short of _________ foods, though, so I thought I would give what I could.

I walked into a local store and started to _________ my cart with toaster pastries and cereal. I _________ loving them for breakfast when I was _________ as a little boy growing up and I hoped what I bought might _________ a few little guys today.

I ____________ back at the cashier and said, "It's for the food pantry."

In fact, I ____________ tried to get out of the ____________ without mentioning it, because an anonymous (匿名的) act of kindness is the ____________ kind. I didn't want any ____________ or praise for what I did. I had needed to use the food pantries myself when I was an ____________ and struggling young father with a family to feed. And it felt so ____________ to complete this circle of love and give back to others in need.

Love is in every act of kindness no matter how ____________. It is a glorious tapestry (织锦、挂毯) of which we all are a part. It is so big that it is beyond comprehension. Still, we should take our ____________ in that tapestry, we should ____________ into the circle of love that never ends and become ____________ of something big while doing something small.

5 . Almost all animals sleep, but do they dream? We certainly can't ask animals if they dream, but we can at least ________ the evidence that they might. There are two ways in which scientists have gone about this seemingly ________ task. One is to look at their physical behaviour during the various stages of the sleep cycle. The second is to see whether their sleeping brains work similarly to our own sleeping brains.

The story of how we ________ how to look into the minds of sleeping animals begins in the 1960s. Back then, reports began to appear in medical journals describing people acting out ________ in their dreams. This was curious, because during so-called REM sleep(rapid eye movement), our muscles are usually paralysed.

Researchers realised that causing a similar state in ________ could allow them to explore how they dream. In 1965, French scientists Michel Jouvet and J F Delorme found that removing a part of the brainstem, called the pons, from a cat's brain ________ it becoming paralysed when in REM. The researchers called the condition "REM without atonia" or REM-A. Instead of lying still, the cats walked around and behaved aggressively. This hinted they were dreaming of ________ from their waking hours.

________ movement is not the only way of looking into dreams, though. Researchers can now ________ look into the electrical and chemical activities of brain cells in animals while they sleep. In 2007, MIT scientists Kenway Louise and Matthew Wilson recorded the activity of neurons in a part of the rat brain called the hippocampus, a structure known to be involved in the formation and encoding of memories. They first recorded the activity of those brain cells while the rats ran in their mazes. Then they looked at the activity of the very same neurons while they slept. Louise and Wilson discovered similar patterns of firing during ________ and during REM. ________ , it was as if the rats were running the maze in their minds while they were sleeping. The results were so clear that the researchers could infer the rats' precise ________ within their mental dream mazes and map them to actual spots within the actual maze.

Does the behaviour of cats in science experiments actually ________ dreaming? Do rats have any subjective awareness that they' re running their mazes in their minds while they nap? We can say with a reasonable amount of ________ that the physiological and behavioural features of dreaming in humans have now been seen in cats, rats, and other animals. Yet what it's actually like to ________ a dream if you' re not human remains a mystery.

6 . I dreamed about my daughter, Jennifer, who is 38 now, a wife and a mother of three. They lived about an hour and a half away from me, but it seemed as though we were worlds away. I________to hear my daughter's voice. I rang her up. She answered on the second ring.

"Hey," I said, trying to sound________. "I had a dream about you last night."

"You did?" Then Jennifer________me. "I dreamed about you too. It was a________dream. I won't even tell you anyway." But she couldn't________her tongue. "We were walking to a wedding ceremony through a vegetable garden. A farmer________that I had stepped on one of his tomatoes. He asked me to pay 43 cents for it.________, I didn't have any with me and asked you for it, but you________. I woke up in tears."

Jennifer________a laugh. "Wasn't that very silly, Mother?"

"No, not at all." I said________. "There were so many things I should have done for you."

"Well, you could have gotten up from your________sometimes," she said. "You were always writing."

Silence, the________seemed over. I came to________that our relationship probably broke down over a lot of little things.

I found a small bag, dropping 43 cents into it, I________the bag to Jennifer with a note in an envelope.

The next day, the phone rang, "Mama, I got the 43 cents!" she said________.

7 . My life as a tax-paying employed person began in middle school, when, for three whole days, I worked in a baking factory.

My best friend Betsy’s father was a manager at Hough Bakeries, which, at Easter time, _________ little bunny (兔子) cakes for all its _________throughout Cleveland. It happened that the plant downtown needed eight kids for _________ help during our spring break, for which I had no_________ beyond listening to my favorite records. I’d _________ minimum wage. I’d see how a factory_________. My parents thought all of this was a grand idea and called Betsy’s dad with their _________.

Our_________in the factory were simple: Place cakes on a moving belt. Attach icing (糖霜) ears. Apply icing eyes and nose._________ bunny from the belt. This was ____________ than it sounds.____________ a bit and the cakes pile up. As I told my parents at dinner that first night, it was all a little more high-pressure than I’d   ____________ .

Dad __________. The son of a grocer, he’d spent the summers of his childhood____________ food in Benardsville, New Jersey. This was the sort of work that made you____________ the dollars you earned and respect those who did the work, he told me.

8 . On a freezing January evening, Ashley Austrew sat in her car in an Omaha parking lot. She was working up the _______ to go into a comedy improv (即兴表演) class. For 20 minutes, the 33-year-old journalist and mom of two sat with thoughts of _______: “I can’t do this. I’ll be the worst one.” Then she turned off the engine, took a few deep breaths, and went _______.

For Austrew, _______ improv was the first small step to improve her self-esteem. She lacked confidence and didn’t have the courage to try anything _______. So she made a list of all the things she was afraid to _______ and then asked herself, “What if I didn’t let my excuses win?” Improv was her biggest _______.

Her fear _______ as soon as she walked into the class. Her classmates were also _______, and she discovered that she was ________ capable of earning a few laughs and making new friends. Over the next two years, Austrew went on to deal with other what-ifs, including writing a book. “Self-esteem is like a muscle--you have to ________ it constantly,” she says.

Some people are ________ with a seemingly unshakable positivity, but most of us need to learn how to ________ ourselves up by our own hands. Thankfully, like Austrew, we can learn to feel ________ about ourselves and ________ our feelings of hope.

9 . My fifth graders are Latino. Tm always impressed by what they know, what they don’t know and what _________ them up.

St. Patrick s Day approaching, I want them to have a _________ about it. What is St. Patrick’s Day about?” I ask.

A voice blurts, “The ones who _________ over cans.”

“What?” I question.

A girl _________ him. “Maybe he means the ‘duendes’, ” she says, _________ gnomes (地精） in Spanish folktale. “Like   ‘leprechauns’ in English! ‘Lep’ equals ‘ leap’, ‘re’ equals ‘over’ and ‘chauns’ equal ‘ cans.’” She is cautious and protective in her _________ But I have to laugh. Leap-over-cans, It’s a _________. These kids make me laugh a lot.

I _________ myself and continue. “Right, leprechauns are fairies the _________ believe in. You made a correct __________ about Ireland, ’’

I tell them St. Patrick was a kid, __________ older than they are. He was kidnapped to Ireland and made to watch sheep for six years, all __________ in the middle of nowhere. He __________ a lot, not much else to do.

The kids are totally __________, big-eyed.

“He decided to escape. He walked about 200 miles and __________ a captain of a boat to bring him back to England. More __________, he went back to Ireland later and converted the Irish people into Christianity. __________ that, he’s called a saint.”

A hand __________ up. I figure here's a critical-thinking question. So I __________.

“St. Patrick left the sheep all alone. What happened to them?”

How am I __________ to know? Class moments like this are what keep teachers going.

10 . It was summer 2019 in Aurora, Colorado, when CBS News first met Finn Lanning, a math teacher, and Damien, his student who always stood out.

Lanning was astonished when Damien told him he was not coming back to _______. He sat Damien down and found out what his story was. He learned that Damien had a _______ in heart and was in foster (寄养) care because social services couldn’t find a foster family willing and able to meet his medical needs. He was _______ to leave school and move into a hospital.

But the real _______ was that Damien needed a transplant desperately. A lot of times it’s _______ to get a transplant if someone doesn’t have a stable home to return to after surgery.

“It _______ me like a ton of bricks. I mean, you just can’t sit across from somebody you care about and hear them say something like that and know that you have room to help,” Lanning said. That’s how Lanning became a foster parent. He _______ Damien even though he’d been a confirmed bachelor (单身汉) who delighted in his childlessness.

They got along smoothly, although Damien refused to get too excited. “I’m afraid the bubbles will burst one day. It’s kind of bad thinking about that, but some people actually do that. Like, they’ll be happy with you one day and then just kick you out the next,” Damien said. Lanning told him he’s not going anywhere, _______ Damien believes it or not.

In the nearly two years since CBS News shared their story, Damien was able to get a transplant and he’s a much _______ 15-year-old. “It’s like a dream come true,” Damien said.

It’s proof that sometimes ________ do end happily ever after.