1 . I remember the first day when I saw Sally playing basketball. I watched in wonder as she struggled her way through the crowd of boys on the playground. She seemed so _______, but she managed to shoot jump shots just over their heads and into the net. The boys always tried to stop her _______ nobody could.

I began to notice Sally at other times, basketball in hand, playing _______. She practiced dribbling and _______ over and over.

One day I asked Sally why she _______ so much. Without a moment of hesitation she said, “I want to go to college. The only way I can go is to get a _______. I’m going to play college basketball and I want to be the best one. I believe that if I am _______ enough, I will get one. My father has told me that if the dream is big enough, the facts don’t _______.”

I _______ her through those junior high years and into high school. Every week, she led her team to ________. One day in her senior year, I saw her sitting on the grass, her head ________ in her arms. Slowly and quietly, I ________ and sat down beside her. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Oh, nothing, ” came a soft reply, “I am just too short.” The ________ told her that at 165 cm she would probably never play for a top team—still less she would be ________ a scholarship—so she should stop dreaming about college.

I felt she was extremely disappointed. The next year, by chance, Sally was going to get the college education that she had ________ and worked toward for all those years.

It’s true: if the dream is big enough, the facts don’t count.

2 . 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 . Some years ago on a hot summer day, a little boy decided to go for a swim in the lake behind his house. In a hurry to dive into the_________ water, he ran out of the back door. He flew into the water, not _________ that an alligator (鳄鱼) was swimming toward the _________. His mother in the house was _________ of the window and saw the alligator as it got closer and closer. In fear, she ran toward the water, yelling to her son as _________ as she could.

Hearing her voice, the little boy became _________ and made a return to swim to his mother. It was too _________. Just as he reached her, the alligator _________ him. From the shore, the mother grasped her little boy by the arms just as the alligator grasped his legs. The alligator was much _________ than the mother, but the mother was much too struggling to let the boy go.

Luckily, after weeks in the hospital, the little boy __________. His legs were scarred by the animal and, on his arms, were __________ scratches where his mother’s fingernails scratched. A newspaper reporter, who __________ the boy, asked if he would show him his __________. The boy lifted his pants legs. And then, with obvious __________, he said to the reporter, “But look at my arms.I have great scars on my arms, too. I have them because my mom wouldn’t let me go. They are my mother’s __________ for me.”

4 . When I was a child my father taught me five words: stand porter to your mind. I’ve used it all my life — in my acting career, as a mother, and in my _______ activities. Nowadays this phrase might seem old-fashioned, but it still _______.

A porter is a gatekeeper, someone who stands at a door letting people in or out. Dad would get me to picture myself stopping _______ things — such as fear — at the door, but saying “Come in” to faith, love and _______.

As an actress, before I went on camera, I’d make sure anxiety stayed out and confidence in my ability _______. And as a mother, when I was anxious about my children, I would try not to let worry in but would fill my mind with _______ in them.

Of course, there were always times when I’d _______ those words. I remember one time _______. In 1972 my husband and I opened our own hotel. This was a new business venture for us, and it was more _______ than we had figured. Something was ________ going wrong. Once, a flu epidemic (流感) suddenly left us with no maids. Then there was the energy crisis. The price of gasoline doubled, and tourism in California ________. How could we fill our beds? What if we kept ________ money? Here I was at the front desk of the hotel, and those old uninvited guests, fear and worry, were sneaking in. But I ________ them just in time. I stood porter. I stood in the door of my mind and sent fear packing.

These days at the hotel, whenever fear tries to ________, I just smile and point to the ________ that reads No Vacancy.

5 . 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.

6 . During the day, I heard something happened at the Twin Towers. But nobody seemed to really ____ what was going on. Not until school let out did I realize something might be ____. My dad usually ____ me up, but he wasn’t there. My dad was a firefighter. His ____ was less than a mile from the Twin Towers.

When I got home, my mum told me that the Twin Towers had been attacked, and that my dad had gone there to ____. I remember only bits and pieces, like my mum calling hospitals all over New York City, ____ to find my dad. Hopelessly, she told me that he was probably ____.

We didn’t learn exactly what had happened to him until much later. We ____ that he had sent a radio message at 9:56 am when he and hundreds of other ____firefighters were in the burning South Tower, saving as many people as possible. Just three minutes later, the tower ____.

Twenty years later, I still ____ my dad every day. He instilled (灌输) in me a ____ for my community, and his ____ encouraged me to volunteer.

Looking back, I don’t think only of the sad ____. I also remember the great acts of so many people, ____ my dad. I’m really proud to call him my hero.

7 . 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 . A pioneering dancer is proving that you can chase your dreams—even in a wheelchair. Since the age of three, Chelsie Hill had dreamed of becoming a dancer. “The only thing that I _______ was dance,” she told CBS News. 

That ambition nearly ended one night in 2010. Hill, _______ a 17-year-old high school senior in Pacific Grove, California, was in a car accident that put her in the _______ for 51 days and left her paralyzed (瘫痪) from the waist down. 

For most people, that would have _______ any hope of a dancing career. For Hill, it was the _______. Far from being an obstacle (障碍), her wheelchair encouraged her. “I wanted to prove to my community—and to myself—that I was still ‘_______’,” she told Teen Vogue. “Whatever normal meant.” 

Normal for her meant _______. So Hill did it in her wheelchair right _______ her nondisabled high school dance team. “Half of my _______ was taken away from me, and I have to move it with my hands,” Hill told Today. “It definitely ________ a lot of learning and patience.” 

After ________, Hill wanted to expand her dance network to include ________ like her. She met people online who had suffered various physical injuries and shared her determination, and she invited them to dance with her. “It was such a(n) ________ experience.” Hoping to reach more people in a larger city, Hill ________ to Los Angeles in 2014 and formed a team of dancers with disabilities she calls the Rollettes. 

“I want to ________ the stereotype (模式化观念) of wheelchair users and show that dance is dance, whether you’re walking or you’re rolling,” she told CBS News.

9 . The Power of Kindness

Leo Kellner loves helping people in the sweetest way possible — by baking them cakes and pies. The old man from Hastings, Nebraska,___________his wife in 2012. They had been together for 72 years.

Since his wife passed away, Kellner took up___________as a way to give back to the community. “I didn’t know what to do with myself,” Kellner said. “I was___________all the time, and I thought I’d better do something that could make me get out of the___________and be good to the community as well, and that’s how it started.”

That first year, Kellner made 144 pies for people in need. He contacted community organizations to let them know he’d like to connect with families having a___________time. Kellner then started reaching out to those families, getting to know them, and baking some lovely cakes and pies during their time of need.

What he did made him widely known around the communities. And whenever people met him, they showed their___________to him.

“I regard everybody as a___________— I love everybody even people that gave me an unpleasant time when things were going hard for me,” Kellner said.

Born in 1918, Kellner lived through the Great Depression, when his family lost their farm. Kellner had to move from state to state as a teenager looking for possible___________on farms to make a living. “I knew what it was to be___________, and a lot of times we just had vegetables and flour mixed up together,” he said. “So as long as I can do it, I will lend a helping hand.”

And Kellner’s made quite an influence. “I’ve got friends from all over,” he said. “I’ve got thank-you cards from Alaska”. Through his baking, Kellner has helped the______________a lot.

______________is powerful. Children begin to learn to cook so they can spread______________just as he does. Kellner believes that this interest just might be the secret to a long and______________life.

Life constantly presents us with opportunities to take an extra step or do a kind deed that will make a______________. And the wonderful thing is that as we do, it changes things for the better for us too. Kindness is also a kind of noble cycle. It is twice blessed: it blesses him who______________, and him who receives.

10 . There was a businessman who was deep in debt.When he sat on the park bench,______ how to save his company, an old man appeared.“I can see something is ______ you,” he said.After hearing him out, the old man asked the man’s name, wrote out a ______, and pushed it into his hand, saying, “Meet me here one year ______, and you can pay me back then.”

It was a check for $500,000, ______ by John D. Rockefeller, one of the ______ men in the world! He could pay the debt instantly, ______, he decided not to cash it.Just knowing he had the money gave him some ______. And ______ months, he was out of debt and making much money. He returned to the park with the uncashed check at the ______ time and met the old man. Just as he was about to ______ the check, a ______ came running and grabbed the old man.“I hope he hasn’t bothered you,” she cried.“He’s ______ escaping from the hospital and telling people he’s John D. Rockefeller.” The businessman stood there,______.All year long he believed he had the money. Actually it was his newly-found self-confidence ______ had turned his life around.