Last night was the last game for my eight-year-old son's soccer team. It was the quarter final. The score was two to one, my son's team in the lead. Parents surrounded the playground, offering encouragement.

With less than ten seconds remaining, the ball suddenly rolled in front of my son's teammate Mickey O"Donnel. With shouts of "Kick it!" echoing across the playground, Mickey turned around and gave it everything he had. All around me the crowd erupted (突然发出). He had scored!

Then there was silence. Mickey had scored all right, but in the wrong goal, ending the game in a tie. For a moment there was a deathly hush. You see, Mickey has Down syndrome (唐氏综合征)and for him there is no such thing as a wrong goal. All goals were celebrated by a joyous hug from Mickey. He had even been known to hug the opposing players when they scored.

The silence was finally broken when Mickey, his face filled with joy, hugged my son tightly and shouted, "I scored! I scored! Everybody won! Everybody won!" For a moment I held my breath, not sure how my son would react. I need not have worried. I watched, through tears, as my son threw up his hand in the classic high-five salute and started chanting, "Way to go Mickey! Way to go Mickey!" Within moments both teams surrounded Mickey, joined in the chant and congratulated him on his goal.

Later that night, when my daughter asked who had won, I smiled as I replied, "It was a tie. Everybody won."

Golden Girl

My mother looks just like many grandmothers. She is short, plump, and white-haired. She’s rosy-cheeked and cheerful, and when she laughs her eyes almost seem to disappear behind those chubby cheeks. She comes from an old, traditional Catholic family. She was a career civil servant. In short, she didn’t do crazy stuff.

That all changed a few years ago. She began to surprise my older brother and me with what she described as “independence.” At the time, we merely saw them as examples of irresponsibility and possibly age-related questionable judgment.

In the year she turned 75, she informed us she’d booked a seven-night trip to Turkey. A vulnerable little old lady wandering on her own, not knowing the language and customs— There was no way we could allow that! She paid no attention to us and off she went. She hired a taxi driver who showed her around, and bought some rugs from a vendor, who promised to ship the rugs home and apparently struck up quite a friendship with her.

We couldn’t believe how naive she was and explained that she had been tricked. However, her rugs arrived some weeks later. As did a lovely note from Mustafa. To our even greater surprise, the following year Mustafa himself arrived, and promptly called our mother to inform her of that fact.

At 77, she did a similar thing while on a Caribbean cruise with her younger sister. She wandered off on her own, and had a motorcycle rickshaw driver “show her around the island” for several hours.

Still, her 80th birthday was when she really outdid herself. During the birthday lunch with her family, Mom informed us that she decided she had to get her first tattoo. It seemed so absurd we didn’t believe it. Six days later, she had a tasteful butterfly on the outside of her left ankle.

My brother and I wondered: Had she become addlebrained (糊涂)? But Mom proved that she was thinking straighter than most of us. Her seek of independence seems to be thoughtfully based on a realization that life is to be lived, and when there’s relatively little of it left, it needs to be lived now. I don’t think Mom knows what her next big “thing” is. She’s a little old lady who sits in her apartment, but she won’t sit still much longer.

Many years ago, my father told me a real and dangerous story about helping a stranger who was hit by a car.

My father was in a hurry. That day he had an important trade talk. Suddenly, he saw a man lying in the street. The man was bleeding. At first, my father thought that the man was dead; however, he decided to help him at once.

My father couldn’t believe many people’s apathy towards this terrible scene. No one was helping the man. They were passing by in their cars to look at him and then driving on. My father thought that this was completely unacceptable. My father took him to the nearest hospital. He feared that the stranger could die because he was losing so much blood.

The unexpected situation happened when my father tried to go back for the 9 o'clock meeting. The police stopped him and said he could not leave the hospital until the man woke up. My father was very angry at that, but he couldn’t do anything. My father was worried about the man. He was trying to help and be kind. On the other hand, he was also worried about himself. If the stranger died, my father might be thought to be the murderer. He was feeling very nervous because he didn’t know what was going to happen to the stranger.

Luckily, the stranger woke up after nearly an hour and talked to the police. And my father was no longer considered a murderer. He left the hospital feeling very strange. He felt happy because he had saved a human being, but at the same time he felt stressed because if the stranger had died, he would have been in big trouble.

That morning my father’s absence from the trade talk caused a lot of loss, but he told me he didn’t regret.

A．He would avoid getting himself into trouble.

B．He would still help others just as this time.

C．He would have no interest in it.

D．He would report it to the police.