April Fools’ Day

Nat woke early and jumped out of bed. Today was the best day of the year for him. Nat loved to play tricks, and today was April Fools’ Day.

Some of Nat’s tricks were big hits. Last year, he short-sheeted his sister’s bed. She couldn’t understand what was going on and started to think that her legs must have grown much longer during the day. When she realized what had happened, she laughed her head off.

Some of Nat’s tricks were not so successful. Mom didn’t think finding a furry toy mouse in the fridge was humorous at all. After she calmed down a bit, she said, “That’s it! There’s a ban on Nat tricks for two weeks.”

Nat was also the class clown. He was always making jokes in class. He liked it when he made the other kids laugh. Since it was April Fools’ Day, he felt like he had to come up with something really good to provide his classmates with some really good entertainment.

For that, Nat thought long and hard before he came up with his brilliant idea. He bought two toy frogs which were made out of green plastic and looked very realistic. Nat knew just the trick he would play on his classmates.

Nat arrived at school early. To succeed in his plan, he needed to get into the classroom before anyone else. Nat’s class had a rainforest terrarium (饲养皿). It had plants, insects, and three frogs in it. Nat’s idea was to pretend that the frogs had escaped. He knew that Ms. Lopez, his teacher, wasn’t afraid of frogs but several of his classmates, including himself, were.

Nat slipped into the classroom. Good! There was nobody here. He put one of the toy frogs on the floor, near the terrarium and the other on his friend Stacey’s desk. Nat knew that Stacey really didn’t not like frogs. Also, she played a great trick on him last April Fools’ Day. To make his trick more convincing, Nat pushed the lid of the terrarium open. Then he rushed off to morning gathering.

When the students got back to class, no one noticed the toy frogs at first.

Nat realized that he had opened the lid of the terrarium.

“Once there was a ship travelling on the tough sea and on the ship there was a pair of couple. All of a sudden, the ship met with an accident and the couple had no choice but to run to the life boat without delay. After reaching there, they realized that there was space only for one person. At that very moment, the husband pushed his wife behind him and jumped onto the lifeboat himself, leaving his wife standing on the sinking ship, shouting something to her husband eyes filled with tears.”

After listening to all this reply, the teacher glanced through the whole class again and noticed that there was a boy sitting silently throughout. Then she asked him the same question.

The boy answered, “I believe she would have shouted-Take care of our child.”

Listening to his remarks, the teacher was surprised and asked the boy doubtfully. “Have you heard of this story before?”

Shaking his head, the boy said softly and sadly, “No, I haven’t. But that’s what my mother said to my father before she died of a deadly disease.”

Moved and feeling sad, the teacher replied. “Your answer is absolutely right!”

Then she continued, “Let’s take up the story. The ship sank eventually and the husband went home and brought up their daughter alone. Many years later after the death of the man, their daughter was tidying up all his belongings when she found his diary.

In his diary, (提示：同学们可以想象日记中可能记载的内容，比如：为什么父亲会舍弃母亲而独自活下来? 父亲在抚养孩子过程中的煎熬，以及怎样度过这些煎熬?)

The story was finished and the class was silent.(提示：故事讲完，大家陷入了沉思，接下来同学们可以从很多方面对生活进行思考，比如：人性，很多事情我们往往只看到表象而忽视了内在;再者，也可以从父母之爱，等方面入手。)

Where were you when you first heard My Heart Will Go On? You know that love song that took over the world in the late 1990s, the one that ruled radios and television screens. that trilled through the air when you rang your neighbour’s doorbell, or rang out of a Valentine’s Day musical card—the song we love to hate now because it is almost shameful to admit how much we listened to it in 1998. I’m no fan of the song, but I’ll tell you one thing—it saved my life.

I remember where I was when I heard the song,13 years old, only a few weeks away from receiving my class eight report card. When my mother and 1 went to collect it from school, the skies were grey. On the left side of the report card was the failure of my choosing—Maths, Physics and Chemistry—on the bottom of the right hand side it said Not Promoted(不升级) in red ink. My mother, an English teacher in another Calcutta school, was too proud to beg the principal for the three marks I needed in Chemis-try to be promoted to class nine. I walked along, thinking of the last song 1 was watching on MTV before we left for school. It was Dion’s all knowing hit My Heart Will Go On: “You have come to show you, go on….”

I was a fool to have ever thought that I could get away with not studying and watching MTV for hours on end. Till class eight, my father had refused to get a cable connection on the grounds that my brother and I would forever be glued to the screen, not study and fail the exams. The year after he gave in to his desire to watch late night football, I proved him right. I failed class eight because I was in love with the Backstreet Boys and would watch MTV all the time so that I wouldn’t miss a single video. That’s the whole truth and the band will never know the price I paid for my love.

Failing the year changed the world as I knew it.

Some months later, when the talent competition was an-nounced in school, I was picked for the final round.