首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Old 8mm videos of my older brother and me depict the same casual disregard any child has for a parent. My father, nearing 70, sh
Old 8mm videos of my older brother and me depict the same casual disregard any child has for a parent. My father, nearing 70, sh
admin
2012-12-01
43
问题
Old 8mm videos of my older brother and me depict the same casual disregard any child has for a parent. My father, nearing 70, shot hours of footage of us with his old-fashioned video camera, his booming baritone narrating while Dan and I played air guitar or showcased our best belly flops. In my favorite vignette, I am smearing chocolate in my hair as Dad trills my nickname, Jussy, in trademark, singsong staccato.
My father, Sidney Harman, is credited with many things: building one of the biggest audio-equipment companies in the world, Harman International; maintaining an impressive golf handicap into his 90s; buying Newsweek from The Washington Post in 2010, when he was 91. He was puckish; he was a poet, a philosopher, and a sports enthusiast. But more than anything, my dad was a magician.
I will never forget the way his wiry eyebrows furrowed when he beguiled a stranger’s son at a restaurant, asking him to blow on a coin that would later surface in the boy’s ear. I remember willfully insisting that the quarter had never vanished and reappeared, that it had been in his pocket the whole time. That was my role: the adversary. When I was a kid, nothing my dad did—despite his curiosity, good humor, or success—particularly impressed me.
In the seventh grade, I was accepted to a prestigious all-girls horseback-riding camp in Vermont. Only for the most serious equestriennes, the program demanded hours of intensive lessons and a regimented diet. Prior to my departure, I heavily campaigned for care packages, citing the irreparable side effects of withdrawal from Sour Straw candy. Halfway through camp session, I received a notice that a package was waiting for me at the canteen, but that it had been inspected for contraband. Evidently Dad had bought a board game and filled the box to the brim with candy, and then had taken it to be shrink-wrapped. Although the packaging was seamless—and, as the camp director admitted, unprecedented—my sweets were seized. As I walked away with my gutted Monopoly game, I read the note from my dad: "A game for a gamine," he had written, in trademark, blocky scrawl.
That wasn’t the only time one of his tricks backfired, but he never stopped trying. When I was in the 12th grade, a teacher ordered me to rewrite an essay on Henry IV. Although I was fairly confident in my mastery of Falstaff as a foil to Prince Hal, I asked Dad for help. After an hour of brainstorming, we crafted a three-page masterpiece, which included two, single-sentence paragraphs for emphasis. We were quite pleased with our creativity, especially those two artful sentences. When I came home with an F, my dad maintained that Mrs. B. wouldn’t know iambic pentameter if it bit her in the ass.
It was this refusal to ascribe to social rules that made him so magical. And although I used to cringe when he would pick me up in his convertible, Frank Sinatra blaring from the speakers, the more I listened, the more I became enchanted with 01’ Blue Eyes.
My dad always said his goal was to live long enough to see my older brother graduate from high school; this would have made him 82. At my own college graduation, Dad—then 88 and lively as ever—drank warm keg beer from a plastic cup and flirted with my roommates.
When we found out last March, that at 92, he had acute myeloid leukemia, no one believed my dad was really sick. He didn’t look it, and he didn’t feel it, he said; his opinions were still provocative, his jokes, terrible. But as we sat on the balcony of my parents’ oceanfront home on Venice Beach, he encouraged me to pursue my dream of writing, assured me I had a wonderful partner in my boyfriend, and told that one day, I’d be a lovely mother. The words were heavy, but the sun on my nose was warm, and I didn’t take any of it too seriously. After all, he’d always had a penchant for dramatics.
A month later, in April, I saw him at the hospital for the last time. Despite the morphine coursing through his veins, he looked at me and conspiratorially suggested we "get out of here." I smiled at him, his warm body bloated with chemicals, his face shrouded in unfamiliar stubble, his dark-blue eyes weighted and cloudy. I finally understood that this was his final trick: the disappearing act. (From Newsweek; 750 words)
What does she most probably mean by saying that her father is a magician?
选项
A、He is optimistic and unconventional.
B、He is good at playing tricks.
C、He is endowed with exceptional skills.
D、He possesses magical power.
答案
A
解析
主旨题。纵观全文,作者的父亲一直以积极的态度对待生活,即使在身患重病时仍然不忘和家人开玩笑;同时他不喜欢受规则的约束,文章第六段“It was this refusal to ascribe to social rules that made him so magical.”,故正确答案为A。他虽然经常耍些小把戏,但经常失手,“That wasn’t the only time one of his tricks backfired”,因此B不是正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/zKUYFFFM
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
EducationalattainmentinruralAmericareachedahistoricheightin2000,withnearlyoneinsixruraladultsholdinga【M1】__
______wasfamousforhisabdicationbecauseofhismarriagewithadivorcedAmerican.
Peopleusuallycommunicatebyspokenandwrittenlanguage,yettheycanalsocommunicatewithoutwordsandthiskindofcommunic
Accordingtoreportsinmajornewsoutlets,astudypublishedlastweekincludedastartlingdiscovery:thenation’sJewishpopu
The______providesgreatphilosophicalinsightIntothenatureofthelinguisticcommunication.
Youshouldnotfearspidersthankstotheirpoison.Ofallthespidersin【M1】______NorthAmerica,onlyonekindisreallyda
Thestudyof______doesNOTformthecoreoflinguistics.
Thestudyof______doesNOTformthecoreoflinguistics.
随机试题
ISAM文件采用______索引结构,而VSAM文件采用______索引结构。
下列关于正常人体胰液的叙述,不正确的是
A.大肠B.胃C.三焦D.小肠
疝手术患者入院时血压150/96mmHg。针对此血压值正确的处理措施是()
某股份有限公司经批准向社会公开募集股份,但超过招股说明书规定的截止日期只募足了其发行的股份的80%。此时:
平面结构如图所示,自重不计。已知:F=100kN。判断图示BCH桁架结构中,内力为零的杆数是:
要约只能向特定的人发出。()
一个SQL语句原则上可产生或处理一组记录,而主语言一次只能处理一个记录,为此必须协调两种处理方式,这是通过使用【】机制来解决的。
请在【答题】菜单下选择【进入考生文件夹】命令,并按照题目要求完成下面的操作。注意:以下的文件必须保存在考生文件夹下。在考生文件夹下打开文档word.docx,按照要求完成下列操作并以该文件名(Word.docx)保存文档。某
Whatisthispassagetalkingabout?
最新回复
(
0
)