A Little Boy

A little boy selling magazines for school walked up to a house that people rarely visited. The house was very old and shabby and the owner hardly ever came out. When he did come out, he would not say hello to his neighbors or passers-by but simply just glared at them.

The boy knocked on the door and waited, sweating from fear of the old man. The boy’s parents told him to stay away from the house, and a lot of other neighborhood children were told the same thing from their parents.

Dusk found the boy lingering on and hesitating what to do. As he was ready to walk away, the door slowly opened. “What do you want?” the old man said impatiently. The little boy was very afraid but he had a quota (定额) to meet for school with selling the magazines. So he got up the courage and said, “Uh, Sir, I am selling these magazines and, uh, I was wondering if you would like to buy one from me.”

The old man just stared at the boy without a word. The boy could see inside the old man’s house and saw that he had dog figurines (小雕像) on the fireplace mantle. “Do you collect dogs?” The little boy asked. “Yes, I have many collections in my house. They are my family here and they are all I have.” The boy then felt sorry for the man, as it seemed that he was a very lonely soul.

“Well, I do have a magazine here for collectors. It is perfect for you. I also have one about dogs since you like dogs so much.” The old man was ready to close the door on the boy and said, “No, boy. I don’t need any magazines of any kind, now goodbye.”

The little boy was sad that he was not going to make his quota with the sale. He was also sad for the old man being so alone in the house that he owned. The boy went home and then had an idea. He had a little dog figurine that he got some years ago from an aunt. The figurine did not mean nearly as much to him since he had a real live dog and a large family.

The little boy headed back down to the old man’s house.

From that day on something changed inside the old man.

A boy named Ali had a large and harmonious family, happily living with his sisters, parents and grandmother. His grandmother loved everyone a lot and was respected by all family members. She was very old, but sometimes she would recall things from her past and share with them. Sometimes they would believe her but at other times they would think that Granny might be mixing up the facts due to her old age.

One day, when Ali was in school, suddenly while knitting (编织), Granny remembered something and she couldn’t contain her emotions so she got up to tell her son — Ali’s father. She walked as fast as she could to his room and said, “You always asked about my birth date, but do you know today is the day when I was born?”

She looked at her son with an excited expression, expecting an immediate response. However, her son wondered how she could remember her date of birth in this old age when she forgot so many other things, so he didn’t pay much attention to this. Disappointed at her son’s reaction, Granny then went to Ali’s mother and Ali’s sister, but like Ali’s father, nobody believed her.

Sadly, she went and sat in the terrace (庭院). When Ali returned from his school, he found his grandmother sitting alone with a sad expression. Ali asked his granny about the matter, but she said there was nothing to worry about. After a lot of persuasion she finally told him what was troubling her — nobody seemed to care that it was her birthday today!

After hearing what Granny said, Ali thought of a plan. Purely by chance, some of Ali’s friends were playing nearby so he shared his plan with them.

3 . At eleven, I decided to learn to swim. There was a pool at the YMCA offering exactly the opportunity. My mother continually warned against it, and kept fresh in my mind the details of each drowning in the river. But the YMCA pool was safe.

I had a childhood fear of water. This started when I was three years old and my father took me to the beach.The huge waves knocked me down and swept over me.

The pool was quiet. I was afraid of going in all alone, so I sat on one side of the pool to wait for others. Then came a big boy. He yelled, “Hi, how’d you like to be ducked?” With that he picked me up and threw me into the deep end.I landed in a sitting position, and swallowed water. But I was not frightened out of my wits—when my feet hit the bottom, I would make a big jump to come out of the surface. It seemed a long way down. I gathered all my strength when I landed and made what I thought was a great spring upwards. Then I opened my eyes and saw nothing but water. I tried to yell but no sound came out. I went down, down, endlessly.

When I came to consciousness, I found myself lying on the bed in the hospital.

I never went back to the pool. I avoided water whenever I could. This misadventure stayed with me as the years rolled by.It deprived(剥夺) me of the joy of boating and swimming. Finally, I decided to get an instructor. Piece by piece, he built a swimmer. Several months later, the instructor was finished, but I was not .Sometimes the terror would return. 

This went on until July. I swam across the Lake Went worth.Only once did the terror return. When I was in the middle of the lake, I put my face under and saw nothing but bottomless water. I laughed and said, “Well, Mr Terror, what do you think you can do to me?” I had conquered my fear of water.

4 . When I first met Begay at Los Ninos Elementary on “King and Queen Day”, she was wearing a smile ear-to-ear.

This morning, though, Begay was________. The parent she had been trying to________was a no-show again. Begay________needed to talk to her. Her boy was smart, but now about a year behind. She________ there were problems at home. He was always late and had already missed too much school.

By 8 a.m. , kids were arriving, and Begay’s classroom quickly became a beehive(蜂窝)of activity. Forty-five minutes later, the little boy finally walked in, with his head and shoulders________. Rather than________him in front of the class, Begay welcomed him warmly. He was testing Begay’s long-held________that no child is a lost cause, no matter how troubled he seems. “It’s the unspoken ________teachers start out with,” Begay said.

During lunch I sat down with Begay’s students and asked them what they liked about her.

“ She never gets angry, “ said one girl. A boy________:” She’s funny and likes telling jokes.”

Before we left the________, the shy, quiet girl next to me________,” She teaches me when I don’t want to learn.”

Her_______stayed with me. When I shared it with Begay, I told her that I felt it was a very ________thing for a child to say. She agreed.

“They never express that to me.” said Begay, “But that’s what I________. I want them to enjoy school. I want them to feel like someone________them.”

5 . For most people, having things stolen feels like an offence. Robbie Pruitt admitted that he got_________ when he discovered the theft of his mountain bike last September. But soon enough, his_________ took a turn. After letting go of his anger and frustration, he found himself on a road to sympathy_________.

For Pruitt, a keen bicyclist, the first thing to do was_________ his   stolen bike. But   when he went bike shopping, he found few available, which got him thinking: What if the_________ of bikes was Covid- 19 related, and what if the person who’d taken his bike really needed_________ to get to work?

With that thought in mind, Pruitt_________ a plan and posted it on the community website. He _________ to fix bikes free of charge for anyone who needed it. He also asked for unwanted bikes, which he would repair again _________. And then he would donate them to folks who could truly use them but didn’t have the __________ to buy one.

The day the post went live, Pruitt received thirty __________ bicycles. Then came more than 500__________ for detailed information. By the end of 2020, Pruitt had repaired more than 131 for donation or to be __________ to their owners.

Pruitt tries to give his donations to families that are __________ struggling. __________ simply satisfying a material need, he has provided an opportunity for kids in his neighborhood to learn how to fix their own bikes.

In addition to __________ skills, Pruitt’s lessons teach teamwork, encourage self-worth, and promote feelings of community. __________, the kids have gained a sense of accomplishment.

“It’s a really great __________ for kids,” said a neighbor in an interview with the local newspaper. “Pruitt is certainly providing a __________, but it’s not just the bikes. It’s the relationships in the community. It’s the __________ that he can make on people.”

6 . Allan Felix is running a big business — something hard to imagine after she lost her sight in her twenties. When she was 21 years old, she went blind due to certain illness. She recalled, “I hid in my home. I hid in the place; to me, that was the safest place in the world.”

Luckily Felix was not someone who gave up easily. Soon she began to explore the world by using her other senses. She touched and smelled everything she came across. She was soon able to do certain jobs herself, like milking the cows.

In her father’s farm, Allan Felix found a new way forward. She founded a company, bringing in organic wines from many different countries. She traveled from South America to Europe with the help of Hanley (a guide dog named Hanley). At first, Allan Felix resisted the idea of a Seeing Eye dog. But it’s hard to imagine her life or her business without him. She said, “When someone tells me something is organic and I don’t really believe it because I taste something funny on it, I’ll put it in front of Hanley’s face and if he likes the wine, he’ll actually go in and sniff it. If it’s not right, he’ll turn his head away. He goes to the vineyard with me. He scratches around. He makes sure that we see earthworms and butterflies. That’s how we know the soil is actually organic and that there are no chemicals.”

Felix told CBS News she believes the loss of her vision was a gift. She said, “It allowed me to pay attention to what I thought was important and also to be able to teach people the broken hang nail is not a big deal, you know what I mean? All things will round to him who will but wait.”

8 . Since the age of three, Chelsie Hill had dreamed of becoming a dancer. That ______ nearly ended one night in 2010, when a car accident paralyzed (瘫痪) her from the waist down. For most people, that would have ______ any hope of a dancing career. For Hill, it was the beginning.

Far from being an obstacle, her wheelchair ______ her. “I wanted to prove to my community and to myself that I was still ‘______,’” she told CBS News. Whatever normal meant, normal for her meant dancing. “Half of my body was ______ from me, and I have to practice moving it slowly with my ______.” Hill told CBS News. “It definitely took a lot of learning and ______.”

After graduation, Hill wanted to ______ her dance network to include women like her. She ______ women who had suffered the same ______ to join her. In disabled dance competitions, all dancers from her team gave great ______ and the audience’s applause suggested that the fun was ______. The dancers aren’t the only ones feeling inspired. One woman saw a YouTube video of the team and ______, “To be in a wheelchair and still be so beautiful makes me know I can be beautiful too!”

Hill has ______ what many of us never will: her childhood dream. “My injury doesn’t ______, so I can live my life, so why am I going to stop living my life because of my injury?”

9 . I had worried myself sick over Simon’s mother coming to see me. I was a new ________ and I gave an honest account of the students’ work. In Simon’s case, the grades were awfully low. He couldn’t read his own handwriting. But he was a bright student. He discussed adult subjects with nearly adult comprehension. His work couldn’t reflect his ________

So, when Simon’s mother entered the room, my palms were sweating. I was completely________ for her kisses on both my cheeks. “I came to thank you, ”she said, surprising me beyond speech. ________ me, Simon had become a different person. He talked of how he ________ me, he had begun to make friends, and for the first time in his twelve years, he had recently spent an afternoon at a friend’s house. She wanted to tell me how ________ she was for the self-respect I had nurtured (培养) in her son. She kissed me again and left.

I sat there, ________, for about half an hour, ________ what had just happened. How did I make such a life-changing difference to that boy without even knowing it? What I finally came to remember was one day, when some students were ________ reports in the front of the class. Jeanne spoke ________, and to encourage her to raise her voice, I had said. “Speak up. Simon is the expert on this. He is the only one you have to convince, and he can’t hear you in the________ of the room. ” That was it. From that day on, Simon had sat up straighter, paid more attention, smiled more, and became happy. And it was all because he ________ to be the last kid in the last row. The boy who most needed ________ was the one who took the last seat that day.

It taught me the most ________ lesson over the years of my teaching career, and I’m thankful that it came ________ and positively. A small kindness can indeed make a difference.