13．The Friday Everything Changed
　　In Miss Ralston's class the boys had always carried water, which meant they could have some time to enjoy themselves out of school, until one day the girls decided it was time to change the rule.
　　That afternoon the teacher was about to (1)       two boys to carry water the next week. My friend, Alma, put up her hand and said, "Why can't girls go for the (2)       too?"
　　After a long silence, Miss Ralston said, "I'll think about that and let you know next Friday."
　　The trouble started right away, because the boys knew that they met a great (3)      . So they decided not to let us girls play baseball with them even if it was our favourite. But Miss Ralston seemed not to (4)       anything unusual going on in class this week.
　　Finally, at lunchtime on Friday, just as the boys' game was going to the end, Miss Ralston headed straight toward the field. She took us all (5)       by surprise. She took the bat (球棒) away from a boy.
　　"Come on, come on!" cried Miss Ralston to Ernie, the pitcher (投手). The first ball Ernie threw was pretty wobbly (歪斜的) and Miss Ralston hit it towards the sideways.
　　Ernie was too surprised to start his second pitch immediately.
　　We girls all rushed to watch it. "Get her! Get her!" the boys also shouted.
　　Ernie looked at Miss Ralston, slowly swung back his big right arm and threw the ball as hard as he could.
　　Then Miss Ralston, ever in a baseball team in senior high, (6)       the ball.
　　"Ah—h—h—h—h—h," we (7)       as it rose high in the air, across the road and into the grass on the other side.
　　That afternoon, there was a silence all over the classroom.
　　"Next week," said Miss Ralston, Alma and Joyce will go for the water. "(8)       as we were, finally we had the right to carry the water."

15．A 12-year-old Hero
　　"Child of Courage" award was given to a boy, Andrew, because of saving people from the water of a canal(运河). He was a 12-year-old hero to all the people．
　　Andrew was on the road with his mother, when a car drove into a metal barrier (金属屏障). The family's car fell down a hill into the canal, and landed with its wheels up. Andrew, 12, then jumped into the water and swam towards the car. He saw the whole family was still in the car — in the water. He took a deep breath and swam through a broken window to save first the boy Mike.
　　Andrew freed Mike and then tried to get Rosie who was under the cold, cloudy water, in the car. Andrew had to feel for her seatbelt because he could not see anything. He took the seatbelt off her, and then went up for air. Finally he went back to pull her out of the car, and Rosie was saved successfully. The parents were badly hurt in the accident and were saved by the police.
　　Andrew's mother said: "After I got help on the phone and looked back, I found Andrew had gone. Then suddenly I saw him come up out of the water like a dolphin, and I could see he had the girl. I was so proud of my son."
　　Andrew said: "I didn't think about it and only knew I had to get them out. I was frightened, but it was all happening so fast. And I really had no time to think about the danger."
　　To Andrew's mother, he was only a 12-year-old son, out to other people, he is the symbol of courage.

16．　　Does your sense of hearing, smell, and touch become better after you go blind? In the past, some philosophers (哲学家) said that blind people had "supernormal" powers of hearing and touch. Today, it's common in films to have a blind character with some kind of super-sense ability: one of the most famous is the blind superhero Daredevil, who hears birds flying miles away from him, and follows bad people with his super smell.
　　So maybe it's no wonder that this is a common question, according to L. Penny Rosenblum, the Director of Research for the American Foundation for the Blind. But, she says, the answer is no: "People who are blind do not have better hearing. Since they cannot depend on their eyes as the sighted people, they use hearing to compensate for the loss of sight."
　　In other words, a blind person's senses aren't better than a sighted person's. But a person feeling the world mostly through hearing and touch is better at simply noticing and identifying (辨别) different sounds and sensations (感觉). Having a walk in a busy street, a sighted person notices the bright, flashing signs on nearby shops, the colors of people's clothing and the size and shape of the buildings ahead of them — all of these tell them where they are, how fast they're going, and what's coming ahead. "On a walk down a city sidewalk, a blind person would probably notice the sounds of traffic (cars, trucks, motorcycles), the footsteps and conversations of the people, and the sounds from the buildings, says Deborah Atein, of the National Federation of the Blind of Illinois. Those sounds and textures achieve the same thing for someone who's blind as colors and lights do for a sighted person.
　　Think of it this way: if you're sighted and have ever felt your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, you might have noticed that all the sounds and sensations of the house seem much more noticeable in the dark, without your eyes distracting (分散注意力) you — the ticking clock in your room, the noise of the fridge through the hall. The cold tile (地砖) under your feet tells you that you're in the bathroom. Finally, you go back to your bed successfully. You've guided all the way back without much help from your eyes — and without super-senses!

17．　　Scientists know that our weight, mental health and immune (免疫) system are connected to our sleep habits. So are your grades — to a surprising degree, a new study finds. It showed that sleep caused for nearly one-fourth of the difference among students' grades in a class. So even if you spend hours studying for a test but get too little and inconsistent (不一致的) sleep, you might still do poorly. And boys with poor sleep habits appeared to suffer (遭受) most.
　　Jeffrey Grossman, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge wanted to test sleep in the real conditions. People's sleep timetables are often disordered and unpredictable. He wanted to see if the sleep connects performance even when a study was done with people who kept regular timetables at home. To find out, his team turned to Fitbits. These wristbands can follow how long people sleep and how often they wake up.
　　The researchers invited 100 around 18-year-old students. Each got a Fitbit to wear all term long. At the end of the term, the scientists looked at the students' sleep data (数据). They paid attention to patterns (模式) in the days and weeks before exams. They then compared those patterns to the students' test scores. The results showed the importance of sleep for students.
　　As expected, teens who stirred (微动) a lot during the night were likely to perform poorly. The same went for those who didn't get enough sleep. But how much someone slept the night before an exam didn't affect that person's grade. So, is pulling an all-nighter before the big test okay? No, it turns out. That's because there was a third important factor: consistency of sleep a week and even a month before an exam. That means "a student who sleeps seven hours at night, every night, will do better than a student who sleeps 7. 5 hours one night and 6. 5 another night," Grossman says. That was true even when both students got the same amount and quality (质量) of sleep.
　　Sleep length, quality and consistency together caused 24. 4 percent of the difference among the students' test grades. And these factors appeared especially important for boys. Grossman's team is not sure why. But boys who didn't get enough sleep or regular sleep were likely to do worse on an exam than girls who had similar sleep patterns.
　　Helping students get more sleep depends in part on schools starting their days later. But it also comes down to students making sleep a higher priority (优先权). That may require getting more sleep and limiting late evening use of phones and other screens. Even with extracurricular activities, schoolwork and a social life, you need to get your sleep.

18．　　British people are famous for saying sorry in almost every situation. They say "Sorry" for asking a question, for their bad weather or because they sneezed (打喷嚏).
　　British people pride themselves on their polite manners towards one another in public. As a result, they use the word "sorry" quite a lot — even when they don't really mean it! Usually, if they want to ask a stranger for the time, they would start by saying, "Sorry to bother (打扰) you. Do you know what time it is?" If they are five minutes late for a date, they would generally greet the person by saying, "Sorry, I'm late!"
　　That they say sorry does not only mean they feel sad for someone else because of their problems or bad luck. In the dictionary, "sorry" also means feeling regret because they have done something wrong. And now, think about this. Normally, when they want to ask a stranger a question, they start with "Sorry to bother you." In this situation, they aren't saying sorry because they feel sad for that person or because they feel regret.
　　In the British culture, saying sorry, in general, is a way to be polite, especially to people who they don't know very well. Besides, it also can bring them other benefits in their daily life. In a recent experiment, an actor asked different strangers on a rainy day if he could use their mobile phones to make a call. When he asked one group of strangers and asked them without saying sorry first, he was only 9% successful in borrowing their phones. However, when he said sorry to another group of strangers about the bad weather before asking if he could use their mobile phones, he was 47% successful.

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