I stood there listening to the angry words of my father. He gathered us all together and had the look on his face that told us that one of us had done something wrong. “Which one of you did this?” he asked in a sharp voice.
We all stared down at the floor covered with the art of a child’s handwriting in chalk. I stood there, trembling on the inside and had hoped that no one else could see it. Scared, the only words that came from my mouth were, “Not me, Dad.”
The others denied it as well. Of course, we knew that one of us must have done it. But I, being the youngest and smallest of the three, just couldn’t find the courage to tell the truth. It wasn’t that I was a bad kid. Lying was not normal for me. But the look on my dad’s face that evening sent a chill (寒冷) up and down my spine (脊柱) and somehow I couldn’t bring myself to tell him.
He had a way about himself when I was a child that made me afraid of him. But I loved him for it too, because it gave me my boundaries of what I could and could not do. I wanted to please him, of course. Maybe that’s why I held back the truth that day. I was afraid of displeasing the one man I looked up to.
Without saying a word, he disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a piece of paper and a pencil. “I want each of you to write exactly what you see on the step,” Dad said.
I was not a stupid kid and when my turn came, I purposely wrote the words differently. So when my dad compared the handwriting, he still couldn’t tell which one of us did it. Angrier, he stood a step above us and looked down at his three small kids. “I’m going to give you one more chance,” said Dad. “If none of you admit, you all will get a spanking (打屁股).”
注意：（1）续写词数应为 150个左右；
（2）请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
“I did it.” someone said and I was pretty sure it wasn’t me.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________We didn’t talk about that day for many years until we were all older.
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