1 . How long have you been going to the same hairdresser or barber? It’s a question that gets us thinking about the unique friendship we _______ with our stylists over the years.

You have confidence in each other. You have a laugh together and regularly _______ each other’s news. Plus they try to make you look and feel your best. That’s a(n) _______ not only for a great friendship, but also for the perfect relationship with your hairdresser. When you find a good barber, it’s something to _______.

Many people have _______ experiences with their hairdressers. I’ve had my hair cut by Claire Miller for more than 15 years. She’s taken me through all kinds of _______, and she’s helped me find a totally new look now during the post-chemotherapy (化疗后) period with dyed blonde hair! _______ hairstyles, there have been communications about the joys and trials of motherhood, the _______ of health problems and changes in our careers and lives — the stuff of 15 years that we have _______ in the three salons Claire has worked in.

While she cut my hair recently, we chatted about that special __________ that forms between hairdressers and their clients. “You hear so many stories from them, and sometimes you feel like a counselor __________ a hairdresser. You assess their needs, and you know how to react to them,”says Claire.

For Claire, the customer interaction is something she loves about the job and that she has __________ developed throughout her working life. “It’s about being human and __________ about people. A lot of my clients are my friends and like family now. It’s my __________ to cut their hair, making them look and feel good, but I also want them to feel __________ by the experience,” laughs Claire.

2 . While working as a graduate student in New York City, Vanessa Bohns was given the much ________ job of collecting survey data in Penn Station as part of an academic research project. Each time she________ a passer-by, she thought she would hear them tell her how________they were. Yet the bad responses rarely came; many more people were________to answer the questionnaires than she had ________.

Was it possible, she wondered, that most of us are________about whether people want to respond to our requests? Over the following decade, she________ multiple studies that confirmed this was indeed the________: in many different situations, people are often far more likely to ________than we assume.

________, it seemed that the results provided a refreshingly________view of human nature. “It started as a positive thing, like, isn’t it ________that people are more likely to do things for you than you think?” However, with time going by and more reflection on the results, Bohns has come to________ that her results reflect a broader tendency that we usually ________ how much influence our words can have over others, whether we’re asking them to________actions that are good or bad. People often________to do what they are asked because they find it too awkward to say no, even when they feel________with our requests.

Knowing this can help us understand how our requests might________other people — particularly in the workplace — and help us adjust our requests________ , in ways that respect people’s ________ and without taking what they have done for us for granted.

3 . Letter writing may seem like a lost art to many of us, but for Emerson Weber, it’s a way of life. Emerson is a fifth-grader. Her dad said the 11-year-old has a(n) _________ letter writing habit and _________ dozens of letters to her pen pals (笔友) each week. She pours her heart out in these simple homemade _________, often including jokes, drawings, and stories about her family.

One day, she decided to write a _________ letter to Doug, their mail carrier, to thank him for helping everyone stay _________.

“You may know me as the person that lives here that writes a lot of _________ and decorates the envelopes,” she wrote. “Well, I wanted to thank you for taking my letters and _________ them. You are _________ to me. I make people _________ with my letters, but you do too. I don’t have a ____________, so how else am I supposed to stay in touch with my friends? You make it ____________!”

Emerson gave Doug the letter and was ____________ to receive a reply from him the very next day. He also included some stamps to help Emerson do what she ____________ best!

Now that their story has gone viral (传播开来), Emerson’s dad is ____________ more people to reach out. After all, everyone ____________ human connection, and it doesn’t take much to let someone know they’re not alone.

4 . We moved into a new neighborhood in 1990, Andy was pretty much the first person we ________. He came across the street to ________ us. Having lived there since 1967, he was warm and kind, full of ________. He would introduce to us which bakery for cakes, which store for shopping and ________ the occupations of everyone around us.

Andy would proudly and regularly ________ his veteran (老兵) cap and play music while doing yard work. ________ anything, though, he delighted in talking about our kids as much as about his. We watched out for each other. He would ________ our vegetable gardens when we went on vacation; we gave him some of our ________ in return. Andy and I would also complain about the big trucks that used our streets as a shortcut. As more time went by, we didn’t see him out ________ his small dog as often due to his ________ problem, and we’d help with clearing the ________ in the winter. Those ties continued with time passing by.

But the real ________ of our neighborhoods is their people — an Andy, or, in some cases, many Andys. Our neighborhoods are built on them, and ________ by their emotional ties. We are better for their ________, and worse for their absence.

Andy died this month. I will miss him, more than he ________.

5 . There was a time I had to count every single penny I spent. I had to keep a _______ in my head while shopping. I would stand there and _______ things up over and over again. It was during the holidays when I was _______ at Trader Joe’s because it had the most gluten-free (无麸质的) food and I had a little child _______ diagnosed with celiac disease (脂泻病). I stood in the frozen food area adding everything up.

The total was too _______. I couldn’t buy everything. I didn’t want my credit card to be _______ . I looked through everything trying to _______ what to put back. I _______ everything everyone else loved, but put back the one thing I loved, which was a simple frozen _______ of chicken meat. But it was what put the total over __________.

I __________ the feeling of not being able to __________ that $3.29 package of chicken. But that was life and I __________ and forgot about it. It was what I had to do.

That night our __________ rang. It was __________ because it was extremely cold and late. I went to the door, opened it, and on my front steps were bags of __________ On the top of the first bag, I saw the chicken meat, the __________ kind I had put back hours ago.

I still have no idea who put all of that food on my doorstep. I cannot describe the feeling of realizing that even in __________ I wasn’t alone. My kids were so __________ about all the delicious food. My heart was filled with the feeling of __________. At that moment I knew I was not alone.

6 . Acts of kindness are wonderful in so many ways. They_________the recipient and they're also a great reminder of all the_________acts that are taking place in the world. With the media full of CO VID-19-related_________, these selfless acts are increasingly important. This was just the_________when Steve Farmer shared a recent uplifting event on his Facebook page that_________him.

Farmer posted how he'd gone to work after the quarantine(隔离)was lifted and had forgotten his work pass. _________, he had to lock his bike just outside an underground station next to his office. When he returned for his_________in the evening, he found just his lock that had been cut and the bike was_________

The London worker thought he'd never_________his bike again. However, as he went to ask at the station about any potential__________that had filmed the robbery, a rail worker, Abdul Muneeb, rushed over to him and asked him to unlock the__________bike lock to prove he was the__________. Farmer. then explained how Muneeb said "I have your bike" with a__________he would never forget.

With the lock undone, Muneeb told Farmer how he'd__________someone cutting the bike lock earlier on during his shift. He stopped the man from__________the bike and then wheeled it to a__________place. Muneeb__________four hours after his shift had ended so he could see the bike__________to its rightful owner.

As Farmer quite__________posted, “The world needs more Abduls, who is a legend(传奇)of a man and a__________to his employer.”