Erika hated onions. Green,yellow,white or red,she thought they were the most disgusting vegetable in the supermarket. Erika’s father, on the other hand, lived for onions. He put them on everything-salads and sandwiches, toast and eggs. He liked them raw, fried or roasted to a crisp. But there was no way of cooking onions that made him happier than the one he sang about every week: caramelized(焦糖化). It never failed to spoil Erika’s weekend.

One Friday, she couldn’t stand it anymore. When the first notes of “Green Onions” sounded, Erika stood her ground.

“D-a-d,quit it! ”

“You don’t like my song? ”

“No! I hate your song. But not nearly as much as I hate your onions. ”

“You hate caramelized onions?”, he asked. “But, why? ”

Erika could have ranted(碎碎念)for an hour, but she was too angry to talk. All she could say was, “Because they’re gross! ”

“Have you ever tried them? ”

“Well...no. ”

“Then how do you know they’re gross?”

“Because they’re brown and gooey, and they smell like old socks.”

“I’ll make you a deal. You try a cheeseburger with these onions on it, and if they’re as bad as you say they are, I’ll eat anything you want.”

“Anything? Like a jar of paint?”

“It has to be food.”

“Deal. Call me when they’re ready.”

“Ah,ah, ”said Dad, handing Erika a knife. “You’ve got to help me make them, too.”

“What? !”

“If you watch it happen, I think you won’t be so freaked out.”

“Fine. How do we start?”

It was the day before Thanksgiving and Kaleb Benham, a 24-year-old strong man, was wandering around outside his home in Northern California. His 90-pound dog, Buddy, was playing around nearby, doing what dogs usually do. Only this time, Buddy was getting into a whole lot of trouble.

The sound that no one wants to hear alone in the woods caught Benham’s attention. It was the deep roar of a black bear. Benham drove around to see the beast, which weighed around 350 pounds, some 100 feet away. In a second, the bear grabbed(猛然抓取) Buddy’s head and started pulling him away.

Benham ran after them. “Honestly,” he told CBS13 in Sacramento, “the only thing I could think of was ‘save my baby’.” Rushing, he lowered his shoulder and crashed into the bear. But it only seized Buddy tightly. Benham’s heart jumped. He shouted and threw a stone at the bear. Nothing. He found out his can of hair spray(喷雾). He tried firing it immediately at the bear. A bright red cloud enveloped it, and the bear dropped the dog and ran off into the woods.

Buddy was in bad shape. He lay there almost out of breath and his face was terribly broken. “My first thought was that I was going to lose him,” Benham said. He picked up Buddy, put him into his car, and sped off to a nearby veterinarian (兽医). Buddy’s operation took nearly four hours.

This was the second time Benham had rescued Buddy, says CBS13. The first was from a shelter a few years ago. “If it was your kid, what would you do?” he asked. Nodding toward Buddy, he added, “That’s my kid.”

After the first half-day of kindergarten, Abe had something on his mind. His mum, Ricki Weisberg, had made him a sandwich for lunch but Abe wasn’t having it. It was not a good sandwich. So after he stepped off the school bus, he said, “Mommy. Terrible sandwich by the way. Really terrible.”

The honest exchange between Abe and his mum was recorded on video by Weisberg. Weisberg shared it online and it became a hit and brought a lot of laughter to so many people. “It makes me happy because of the gaiety it probably brought to people,” said Weisberg. “For me, I just love that piece of that. Life is hard. So giving people laughter makes me happy.”

But most people just wanted to know one thing: What was the sandwich?

Well, the “terrible” sandwich was a hurried, thrown-together butter and jelly sandwich, said Weisberg. On Abe’s first day, Weisberg reread the school communication and realized she would need to pack him food. At first, Weisberg thought she could make him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But because of food allergy (过敏) considerations at the school, peanut butter was out of the question. So she made him a butter and jelly sandwich.

Weisberg said, “I thought I made a good sandwich and I was being a good mum, so I was just expecting him to be happy. I was quite surprised when he hit me with that sandwich review.”

The butter, Weisberg would later find out, had gone bad. The sandwich tasted really terrible. “It’s really hard being a mum. You never really know if you’re doing it right. I just want to encourage parents to build that level of trust with your kids so they can be honest with you,” said Weisberg.