Do you get angry when your friends sing loudly while you are trying to work, or when your best friend does not wait for you after school?

If you do, you need to take control of your feelings and stop getting angry so easily. Getting angry with people can cause you to lose friends.

Gray Gerber, an American high school teacher, has written My Feelings Are Like Wild Animals to help you control your feelings. It tells teens how to stay cool when bad things happen to them.

The book says that getting angry only makes problems worse. It can never make them better. Getting angry is not a natural way to act, the book says. It is just a bad habit, like smoking.

The book says you can control your anger easily. All you have to do is tell yourself not to be angry. When a baby falls over, he only cries if people are watching him.

Like a baby, you should only get angry if you are sure it is the right thing to do. The book gives many tips(提示)to help you if you get angry easily. Here are our tips:

   (1)Keep a record. Every time you get angry, write down why you are angry.

   (2)Ask your friends to stop talking to you when you get angry. This will teach you not to be angry.

   (3)Do something different. When you get angry, walk away from the problem and go somewhere else. Try to laugh.

When I was a kid in Minnesota, watermelon was expensive. One of my father's friends, Bernie, was a rich businessman, who owned a large store in St. Paul.

    Every summer, when the first watermelon arrived, Bernie would call. Dad and I would go to Bernie's place. We'd sit on the edge of the dock (码头), feet dangling (摇晃), and got ready for a big meal.

    Bernie would take his knife, cut our first watermelon, hand us both a big piece and sit down next to us. Then we'd bury our faces in watermelon, eating only the heart—the reddest, juiciest, firmest, sweetest, most seed-free part—and throw away the rest.

    Bernie was my father's ideal of a rich man. I always thought it was because he was such a successful businessman. Years later, I realized that it was not Bernie's wealth itself but his way of dealing with it that my father liked. Bernie knew how to stop working, get together with friends and eatonly the heart of the watermelon.

    What I learned from Bernie is that being rich is a state of mind. Some of us, no matter how much money we have, will never be free enough to eat only the heart of the watermelon. If you don't take the time to dangle(悬荡) your feet over the dock and enjoy life's small pleasure, your work is probably hurting your life.

    For many years, I forgot that lesson I'd learned as a kid on the loading dock. I was too busy making all the money I could.

    Well, I've relearned it. I hope I have time left to enjoy the success of others and to take pleasure in the day. That's the heart of the watermelon. I have learned again to throw the rest away.

Father is always busy with his work. He knows nothing about housework. He never eats if everyone doesn’t cook for him.

One day, Mother was ill in bed. Father had to cook himself. First， he had to go shopping. But he didn’t know what to buy. So Mother wrote all these things on a piece of paper：

（1）cake（2） egg （3） tomato （4） fish （5） milk （6） salt （7） chicken

Father went out with the paper in his hand. Half an hour later he returned home, with a smile on his face. He brought out all the things: ONE cake, TWO eggs, THREE tomatoes, FOUR fish, FIVE bottles of milk, SIX bags of salt and SEVEN fat chickens. Mother was very surprised and she couldn’t say a word.

There was once a professor of medicine, who was very strict with the students. Whenever he took the chair on the exam committee (委员会), the students would be in fear, for he was seldom pleased with the answers they gave. A student would be lucky enough if he or she could receive a good mark from him. At the end of the term, the students of medicine would take their exam again. Now a student entered the room and got seated before the committee. This student was a little nervous as he knew it would not be so easy to get through the exam at all.

   The professor began to ask. The student was required to describe a certain illness, his description of which turned out to be OK.

   Then the professor asked about the cure (治疗) for illness, and the student also answered just as right.

   “Good,” said the professor, “and how much will you give the patient?”

   “A full spoon,” answered the student.

   “Now you may go out and wait for what you can get,” said the professor. At the same time the committee discussed carefully the answers the student had given. Suddenly the student noticed that there was something wrong with his last answer. “A full spoon is too much,” he thought to himself. Anxiously, he opened the door of the room and cried, “Mr. Professor, I’ve made a mistake! A spoon is too much for the patient. He can take only five drops.”

   “I’m sorry, sir,” said the professor coldly, “but it’s too late. Your patient has died.”

Policemen do cry. Movies and television show that policemen are tough and hard. But policemen do cry.

           Ken Knapcik had been a policeman in Chicago for 20 years when one of his fellow policeman was shot during a drug arrest, and died. Shortly after, he returned home after work to find a note from his 15-year-old daughter on the dining table.

Dad

 This poem came directly from heart. I love you so much. It scares me that you go out every day and risk everything to provide us with all that we have. I am also very proud of you. I wrote this to express how much I love you and how lost I’d be without you.

Laura

P.S. Hey, be careful out there.

           Laura’s poem was called “The Best Policeman.” It was dedicated (献给) “To all the policeman in the world who have daughters who love them with all their hearts, especially to my father had been shot. Part of the poem reads: “ Daddy, my Daddy, can you hear me? Oh, God, I need my Daddy. Please don’t let him die!”

           Knapcik stood alone as he read the poem. “It took me several minutes.” he said. “ I’d got through part of it and have to stop before I could go on. I was weeping（哭泣）. She had never told me she was scared.” He took the poem to work the next day and showed it to his fellow officers. “I ‘ve never seen so many grown men cry. Some couldn’t even finishing reading it.”

           Knapcik keeps Laura’s poem in the pocket of his police jacket. He takes it with him every time he leaves the house to go to work. “I don’t want to be out there without it,” he said. “I’ll probably carry it with me forever.”

Piggy banks have been around for a long time, but did you ever wonder why people liked to make their banks in the shape of a pig?

Pigs have nothing to do with money. They don’t store food like a camel or a squirrel. So how did we end up using a pig as the style of a bank? Believe it or not, it happened by mistake.

During the fifteenth century, metal was very expensive. Dishes and pots were made of a type of inexpensive orange clay called pygg, which was pronounced just like pig. At this time, there weren’t banks like we have today, so people would store their money at home.

When people had extra coins to save, they would place them in clay jars or pots. Since the type of clay was called pygg, people called the jars pygg banks. Over time this evolved （发展）into piggy banks.

After a few hundred years, people forgot that the word pygg referred to the clay the banks were made from. The English language was also changing and the word pig was more commonly used. So in the nineteenth century, when English potters began to make piggy banks, they thought their customers were asking for banks in the shape of pigs, not banks made from pygg.

Today piggy banks are made from all kinds of materials, and they also come in a variety of shapes and animals. But the term piggy bank is still used.

①materials     ②price    ③colour      ④shapes

What is your zodiac (生肖) animal? According to the Chinese lunar calendar (农历), 12 animals mark 12 different years. It is the basis of the Chinese zodiac. Nowadays, Chinese zodiac animals have worldwide fame and are increasingly popular among western people.

The zodiac is an important part of Chinese culture. People believe that the characteristics (特点) of a zodiac animal influence the personality of every person born in that year. For example, people born in the Year of the Tiger are considered powerful and brave.

 Zodiac animals also have some social functions. When people think it is not proper to ask: “How old are you”, they may change their question to “What is your zodiac animal?” With this question, you can figure out roughly which year someone was born and the person’s age.

 Zodiac animals are not special to China. Many countries share a similar zodiac culture with China. For example, in the Japanese zodiac, a wild boar (野猪) takes the place of a pig and the Vietnamese (越南的) zodiac has a cat instead of a rabbit.

 But have you ever wondered how these 12 animals were chosen to represent each year? According to legend, the Jade Emperor (玉皇大帝) invited all the animals to join him for Chinese New Year. Only 12 animals went to see him. As a reward he named a year after each one in the order they arrived. The ox would have been the first to arrive, but the rat sat on his back and jumped off just before they arrived to come in first place.

Around the world, cars are becoming more and more common. But the problem is that cars is one of the main causes of climate change. One possible way of dealing with it is to make green cars take off.

One kind of green cars that have received lots of attention is the hybrid car. This kind of car uses two kinds of power: gas and electricity. It still burns pollution-causing gas, but it uses less of the gas because it runs on electricity sometimes. Hybrid cars have become one of the most popular green cars, but they aren’t perfect and are more expensive than the usual ones.

Electric cars are one of the oldest kinds of green cars. They just use electricity, and the batteries(电池) need to be recharged(充电) when they are parked at home. Electric cars have been around since 1970s, but they have never become popular. The biggest problem is that there are almost no public places to recharge the batteries when the drivers are on the road. However that may change. The US and China have said that they will provide much money to help their people to use electric cars.

The Apollo Solar Car Team has been developing solar-powered(太阳能) cars since 1998. They have created a 250-kilogram car with three seats. It can travel with a speed of up to 70 kilometers per hour. With a few hours of sunlight, the car’s batteries will be fully charged and can power the car for three hours.

Another choice of the future is air-powered cars. It sounds a little impossible, but scientists will have good ways to make it come true. The perfect cars hasn’t been developed yet. However, researchers never stop trying their best.

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