1 . There was once a boy called Mario who loved to have lots of friends at school. However, he wasn’t sure whether or not his classmates were his true friends, so he asked his grandpa. The old man answered, “I have just exactly what you need; it’s in the attic (阁楼). Wait here for a minute.”

Grandpa left, soon returning as though carrying something in his hand, but Mario could see nothing there. “Take it. It’s a very special chair. Because it’s invisible (无形的) it’s rather difficult to sit on, but if you take it to school and you manage to sit on it, you’ll be able to tell who your true friends are.”

Mario took the strange invisible chair and went to school. At break time he asked everyone to form a circle, and he put himself in the middle, with his chair. “Nobody move. You’re about to see something amazing,” Mario said.

Then Mario tried sitting on the chair. He missed and fell straight onto his backside. Everyone had a pretty good laugh. Mario wouldn’t be beaten. He kept trying to sit on the magic chair, and kept falling to the ground... until, suddenly, he tried again and didn’t fall. This time he sat, hovering (悬停) in mid-air.

Looking around, Mario saw George, Lucas, and Diana — three of his best friends — holding him up, so he wouldn’t fall. At the same time, many others he had thought of as friends were doing nothing but make fun of him, enjoying each and every fall.

Leaving with his three friends, Mario explained to them how his grandpa had so cleverly thought of such a good idea. Now he knows that those who take joy in our misfortunes (不幸) when we are in difficulty are not our true friends.

3 . When my daughter Sara was in the fifth grade, she came to me with a problem. “Marcy hates me!” she cried. “Because Kathy is my friend, too. She wants me to be her friend and nobody else’s. You talk to Marcy. You tell her that I want to be her friend, but I can have other friends, too!”

Oh! I looked at her for a few moments, wondering how I got into this mess (困境), when suddenly an idea came to me.

Picking up two baskets from the living room, I explained, “When everyone is born, he or she has a little basket. This little one here is yours. The big one is mine. As you grow, so does the basket. You can see your little basket is inside mine because when you were born, there were too many things you couldn’t do for yourself. I did everything you couldn’t do on your own.”

She nodded.

“Well, as you grew older and began to do some things on your own, I began placing a few more things in your basket. When you learned to tie your shoes, that went in your basket.”

She said softly, “I can tie my own shoes.”

“Right. As you grow older, there will be more and more things you must do on your own.” As I spoke, I gradually took her basket out of mine and handed it to her. “You will finally carry your own basket with things only you can do.”

She looked up at me and said, “I understand. There are some things that I have to do for myself because they are in my basket.”