1992/01（本試）
1992/01（本試）
My fifteen-year-old son has just returned from abroad with a dozen rolls of exposed film and several hundred dollars in unused travelers checks. His blue bag Lies on the hail floor where he dropped in, about four short steps into the house. Last night he slept in Paris, and the twenty nights before that in various beds in England and Scotland, but evidently he postponed as much sleep as he could; after he walked in and said hello and how much he’d missed home, his electrical system suddenly switched off, and he headed half-unconscious for his bed, where I imagine he may break his old record of sixteen hours.
I don’t think I’ll sleep for a while. This household has been in a state of excitement over the trip since weeks before it began, when we said. “In one month, you’ll be in London! Imagine!” It was his first trip overseas, so we bought him travel books and a cassette tape of useful French phrases, made a list of people to visit, and advised him on clothing and other things. At the department store where we went to buy him a suitcase, he looked at a few and headed for the bags and knapsacks. He said that suitcases were for old people. I am only in my forties, though, and I pointed out that a suitcase keeps your things – a jacket, for example – neat and tidy. He said he wasn’t taking a jacket. The voice of my mother spoke through me. “Don’t you want to look nice?” I said, but he just turned away.
During his trip, he called home three times: from London, from Paris, and from a town named Ullapool in Scotland. “It’s like no place in America, Dad,” he reported excitedly. He hiked through flocks of Scottish sheep and climbed a mountain in a heavy rainstorm. In a village near Ullpool, a man spoke to him in the unfamiliar local language, and, too polite to interrupt, my son listened to him for ten or fifteen minutes, trying to nod in the right places. The French he learned from the cassette was of little use in Paris; the people he spoke to shook their heads and walked on.
I myself have never been outside the United States, except twice to Canada. When I was eighteen, a friend and I made a list of experiences we intended to have before we reached twenty-one, which included hitchhiking to the West Coast, learning to play the guitar, and going to Europe. I’ve done none of them. When my son phoned, I sat down and leaned forward, eager to catch every word. I have never listened on the telephone so intently and with so much pleasure as I did those three times. It was wonderful and moving to hear news from him. To me, he was the first man to land on the moon: I knew that I had no advice to give him and that what I had already given was probably not much help. The money that he’d left on the hall table – almost half the amount I sent him off with – is certainly evidence of that.
Youth travels light. No suitcase, no jacket, not much language, and not much money spent – and yet he went where he wanted to go, did what he wanted to do, and came back safely. I sit here amazed. The night when your child returns with dust on his shoes from a country you’ve never seen is a night that you wish would last for a week.
- What did the son do after exchanging greetings with his father?
① He dropped to the floor, half-unconscious.
② He slept for sixteen hours without waking.
③ He talked about his trip far into the night.
④ He went to his room and fell fast asleep. - Why was the family so excited about the son’s trip long before it began?
① Because he was the first in his family to travel outside the United States.
② Because he would be going overseas for the first time.
③ Because the family considered him much too young to travel by himself.
④ Because they couldn’t believe he was to be the first to land on the moon. - Why did the father advise his son to get a suitcase?
① Because he believed carrying a suitcase would make his son look older.
② Because he considered a suitcase to be better for carrying clothes.
③ Because he thought his son would look nice carrying one.
④ Because the boy’s mother wanted him to have one. - How well did the son communicate when speaking with the local people during his trip?
① He experienced difficulties in Scotland and Paris.
② He had no difficulties, thanks to the language tape he took with him.
③ He had no trouble in Scotland, but he couldn’t communicate in Paris.
④ He managed to communicate in the local language in Ullapool. - What does “youth travels light” in the last paragraph mean?
① Young people don’t need much when they make a trip.
② Young people don’t take a lot of money when traveling.
③ Young people like to wear light-colored clothes when they travel.
④ Young people prefer traveling in the daytime when it is light. - What was it that amazed the father?
① The case with which his young son was able to travel successfully.
② The evidence that the advice he had given was a great help during his son’s trip.
③ The fact that his son only spent half the money which he had been given.
④ The story his son brought back about his trip.
