An acquaintance of mine is a lawyer. He told this story to me about ten years ago.

He was handling the case of a man who passed away and left his house to his twenty-five-year-old son. After paying off all the expenses, the son was left with about $ 40, 000. My friend drew up a check and gave it to the son, who left the office with the check. About a minute later, he came back in and asked if my friend was able to do an electronic deposit (存款) of the money to his checking account.

My friend agreed and they completed the process, which took about fifteen or twenty minutes. After they were done, the son thanked and went on his way.

A week later, my lawyer friend started getting a lot of calls from people he had given checks to during the past week to ten days, saying the checks were repudiated by the bank. After calling his bank, he found out that the man who left with the check for only about a minute used the mobile banking app on his phone and made the deposit that way. Then, he came back in, got the electronic transfer money, and ended up with $80,000 instead of $40,000. He then immediately closed his account as soon as he had the money, got a bank check for the balance, and left for somewhere in Europe the next day. This all but wiped out my friend’s checking account. He had almost a dozen check payments that he had to reissue, which took him several weeks to do.

My friend changed his procedures from then on. He tells all clients now what their options are for receiving their money, but once they choose one and leave the building, their choice can’t be changed.

When my son was 11 years old, he got a small job helping out with a traveling carnival in our town. He didn’t come home at lunch time, phoning instead to tell me he was fine and had found a few days’ work helping out at an exhibit. He turned up for supper as usual however after he finished work.

I asked him how he had managed at lunch and he told me he had made some new friends at the carnival, some young men who were twin brothers, and their mom and dad. They had   paid him a few dollars and invited him for lunch in return for helping them set up their exhibit and wanted him to return the next day to help with other chores (杂务).

I was glad he had found new friends but a little worried about the type of people who might be traveling in a carnival. “Oh, Mom, these are just normal everyday people like anyone else. They just work at a carnival instead of in a store or something”. “Come down tomorrow and meet them yourself,” he said.

So the next day I went to the carnival and to the exhibit he had directed me to. The twin brothers turned out to be Siamese (连体的) twins, joined at the chest. He hadn’t thought this fact was noteworthy enough to mention. When I brought it to him, he said, “Yes, I noticed that too. Do you know that their mom has to make all their clothes because it’s so difficult to find anything to fit them? They’re also really good cooks. Today, Joe, the one on the right, made me spaghetti (意大利面条) for lunch.”

What others see first in a person is not what a child considers important. Where I saw Siamese twins, he saw people having difficulty buying clothes that fit, and young men who were good cooks. It was a lesson I have thought about many times over the years.

Rene Campbell has devoted most of her life to shaping her figure into one completely against what society thinks a woman should look like.

“I was always very insecure about my body image, as everyone seemed to know for sure that women needed to look a certain way,” she says when reflecting on her motivation to transform herself. 【小题1】 For quite some time, she struggled with eating disorders because she was trying to keep her weight really low and appear skinny, like the women on magazine covers. 【小题2】 It was then that she became attracted by the way these seemingly confident women held themselves.

However, building her dream body—gaining over 85 pounds, going from a size 8 to 14—has had its challenges, too. “【小题3】 When I tell them that I am a female bodybuilder, the first reaction is, ‘Muscles for women are just not attractive,’” Campbell says. Though she loves the way she now looks, she is sometimes treated with cruelty.

【小题4】Even though there is a huge market encouraging women to build muscles and tighten their figures, the ideal still stands for smaller waists, and thin legs, the so-called perfect figure. For women to build up strong muscles, it takes a strong heart.

“I gradually learn to ignore others’ voices and become committed to the training. It is a very big shift for me, and it has won me plenty of awards. 【小题5】 My bodybuilding journey makes me realize that I need to do things for myself.” Campbell says.