It was 1958. I was eighteen and was working as a nurse in a rural town west of Sydney, Australia. I was looking forward to having five days _______ from duty after working overtime for some time. _______, the only train that day back to my hometown, over 270 km away, had already _______. I thought I'd thumb a lift.

I waited by the side of the _______ for three hours but no one stopped for me. Finally, a man walked over and _______ himself as Gordon. He said that _______ he couldn't give me a lift, I could come to his house, which was across the road, for lunch. He'd been watching me and thought I must be _______ after standing for hours. I hesitated but he assured me I was _______, and he also offered to help me find a _______ home afterwards.

When we arrived at Gordon's ________, he made us sandwiches. After lunch, he stopped a car, which took me to my hometown.

Then I got married, but my husband didn't believe in giving ________ a ride. This made me feel ________ when we'd pass people waiting on the roadside, as I could ________ offer them the lift they hoped for.

Twenty­five years later, in 1983, I was driving alone to a nearby town, when I ________ an elderly man with a small boy, standing in the glaring heat, trying to ________ a ride. I saw my chance to repay someone for the ________ I'd been given decades earlier. I pulled over and picked the ________ up. I made them comfortable on the back seat and ________ some water and sweets.

After a few minutes of small talk, the man said to me,“You haven't changed a bit, ________ your red hair is still the same.” I couldn't ________ where I'd met him. He then told me he was Gordon.

On August 23rd, my son was out mountain biking with his teacher and friends. As usual, we were waiting at home with lunch ready. At 12:15, he still hadn’t _____. Then, we got the call that he was badly hurt.

We _____ up the mountain in the car. He was in the kind of pain you never want to see. We got him to the hospital for X-rays to be told his collarbone(锁骨) was broken. Collarbones are incredibly _____ to treat, as you can’t just put them in a cast (石膏).

We got him a “figure-of-8” support that keeps both his shoulders aligned (成一直线) . It was the best _____ for making sure the bone grew back straight. Sleeping was very painful for him, and in the next few months everything came crashing down. No _____. No activity. _____ birthday party plans. We got into a new normal at home. We found other things for him to do that weren’t _____, such as reading and making artwork.

I would never _____ an injury on anyone; yet, it is an immediate way to learn how to be patient with life, with the _____, and with each other. My biggest lesson has been that my child may have learned more from this injury than anything else he’s gone through this year, and, ______, it will serve him for life.

People kept coming into St. Stephen’s asking for help with car repairs. Oh, this is obviously an urgent _________. What if I opened a non-profit auto garage that offered _________repairs?

So I _________ myself at Dunwoody College of Technology in the spring of 2008. I knew I had to try to make my idea a _________. However, I was a middle-aged woman and knew _________ about mechanics. _________, none of the guys rushed to be my lab partner. The only thing I could do was watch my classmates and _________ what they did.

One day we were _________ to flare (扩口) brake lines. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do it. “Hey, what’s taking so long?” Mr. Du Vai _________ from across the room. My hands were __________ so badly that I couldn’t hold the tube __________. And tears streamed down my cheeks. At the end of the __________, the other students trooped out. I went to Mr. Du Vai.

“My __________ doesn’t work this way,” I said. “I’m giving up.”

He glared at me. “I’m not going to let you __________!” he said, his voice rising. “I believe in you. You can do this. I’m going to watch you walk across that stage as a __________ in two years. Now get over there and flare those brake lines.”

Tried again. And again. On the fourth try, I __________.

Today I __________ a non-profit called The Lift Garage. Our __________ are about 75 percent less than what a for-profit shop would charge. We’ve __________ low-income families more than two million dollars in car repairs.

Some people want to follow in our __________. I could never have pictured any of this happening. Good thing has a much better imagination!