What’s Wrong with a B+?
Reality isn’t the way you wish things to be, nor the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are.
Robert J. Ringer
It emed to take forever, but I finally turned thirteen last Saturday. I felt warm and happy inside, and would have spent the day with my friends, but alternating sleet and rain kept me at home. I decided to hang around my room and junk a bunch of kid stuff. By midafternoon, three bulging garbage bags leaned against my door. As I grabbed the first bag and began dragging it down the stairs, a snapshot fell to the floor. The face staring up at me was Jane’s. We had been friends in the fourth grade and probably would have been friends forever if her father hadn’t been transferred to Japan. He was vice president of some big hotel chain.
Jane Farmer was the smartest girl I’d ever known. She almost always got straight A’s, and s
he was pretty, too. Part of me wanted to hate her, but I couldn’t. She was too nice. Instead, I envied her and longed with all my heart to be just like her.
全国教师管理信息系统登录
Her hair was the color of honey. She had a zillion corkscrew curls, usually held back by a satin headband that matched our school uniform. When she walked, the curls bounced up and down and reminded me of my pogo stick. My hair was straight, wispy and braided every morning into pigtails.
She was a little plump, but that didn’t matter. Like the other popular girls, Jane was short. That’s what really mattered since most of the boys in our class were also short. I was tall and skinny. Even Jane’s freckles were the cute kind, and the dimples on either side of her mouth made her look like she was always smiling.小学生心理健康知识
My grandfather often called me “funny face” to get me to smile. He wasn’t being mean. He just didn’t understand that my face was the rious sort. My mother didn’t understand either. “Stand in front of your bedroom mirror, Donna,” she’d say. “Practice for five or ten minutes each day, and before long, you’ll have a lovely smile, too.” I tried it a few times, b
ut I felt dumb, and it didn’t work anyway.
Jane was an honor student and got to sit in the front of the class. My desk was in the back, on the side of the room that had no windows. I’d watch Mrs. Schnell, our teacher, pace back and forth in front of us. She was short and stout with wiry red hair and a smile she turned on and off like a water faucet.
I always slumped way down in my desk, desperately hoping to hide mylf behind Stanley, the kid who sat in front of me. It was difficult. Stanley was a head shorter than I was, and he often also scrunched down, trying to hide from Mrs. Schnell. There I would wait, terrified that the next name I heard would be my own. Sometimes my heart thumped so loudly that I was sure her ears would find me even if her mean eyes didn’t.
Day after day, she strutted up and down the aisles, her right hand clutching a sheet of paper that listed every one of us alphabetically. She pretended to study it for a moment, and then her eagle eyes, arching out their prey, would dart from kid to kid. “Who shall it be this time?” she’d crow.哥尔赞二代
Each time she called out a name, the victim would have to ri, stand straight as a broomstick, shoulders squared, and with a book resting across open palms, read to the entire class. Sometimes the person was lucky and only had to read a few ntences or a short paragraph. Other times, it would be a page or two. Once in a while, a whole chapter would be read before she called out the next name.
More than anything, I hated to stand and read aloud to the class, a feat so easily accomplished by Jane. Unlike me, she never slurred her words or stuttered, and she rarely made a mistake. And if she did, she was never made to feel ashamed. Mrs. Schnell would flash a pleasant smile and patiently guide her toward the correct answer. I wasn’t good at reading and could tell that Mrs. Schnell was often not at all plead with me. If only she had treated me the way she treated Jane, I would have done much better. But she was always correcting me too soon, never giving me a chance to say the words.
昆虫世界>思想素质>励志的名言警句
One day after soccer practice, Jane and I were standing together waiting for our mothers. All of the other kids’ parents had come for them and taken them home. Jane leaned again
st one of the stone columns that supported the wrought-iron gate at the front of the school. I leaned against the other and watched Jane read a textbook. We weren’t friends yet. I wanted to ask her if she liked movies and if her parents ever let her go to weekend matinees, but I changed my mind when I looked at her face. I just stared at her instead. She emed to feel my eyes.
“What are you looking at?” she asked. Her voice was soft and kind, not what I expected.
“You,” I said, unable to stop staring.
力量训练有哪些“Why?” she asked.
“Becau you look so sad,” I said. It’s rude to stare. My mother’s words played over and over in my head.
>简简单单的快乐
