2006/01（本試）
While I was growing tip in our small town, Rosemont, I always thought of my neighbor, Mr. Peal, as a strange and somewhat frightening old man. He was always yelling at me and my playmates to stay away from his yard and his old truck. My parents never said much about Mr. Peal and only told me to leave him alone, so I never had any reason to believe he was anything more than an unpleasant man.
But sometimes, at times and places we least expect, we learn something new about people that changes how we look at them. Such a thing happened to mc last year at my university, a hundred miles from home.
One day I was in the cafeteria talking with a classmate about my hometown. Suddenly a student who was sitting next to us interrupted and said, “Did you say you come from Rosemont? Do you know an old man named Peal there? He drove an old blue truck.”
“Why, yes,” I answered. “He’s my neighbor. Do you know him?”
“I do! What a coincidence!” said the student and he began to tell me a story. He told me that he lived in Sunnydale, where the university is, and that one day seven years ago he, his mother, and his little sister decided to spend a day in the mountains near my hometown. “We had to take a train to Rosemont early in the morning, and then a bus from there into the mountains.” he said.
He said that he and his sister began using rocks to make a small poo1 in a mountain stream. “We wanted to catch baby fish and collect them in the pool so that the three of us could watch them swim around for a while before we let them escape back into the flyer.”
He was arranging one of the rocks in the wall when suddenly his sister accidentally dropped a large rock right on top of his left hand. It cut his fingers to the bone and made a terrible wound. “It hurt so much, and it looked awful,” he said. “Mon wrapped my hand in a towel and told us we had to find a doctor.”
But the bus back into town was not due for another four hours. The three decided they would have to walk down the road back to town. However, that too, would take more than an hour. “My mother kept telling mc to be brave, but I could tell that she was really worried. We were all scared.”
Just then, a small blue truck came up the road in front of them.
“Mom started waving and yelling, and the truck stopped. She explained what had happened and asked the driver, an old man, if he would take us into town to see a doctor.”
But the man told her that the doctor was out of town and that the only other doctor in the area was another thirty miles away on the other side of Rosemont, “lie told us to hop in and that there was some ice for my hand in a bucket in the truck.”
The student continued his story, telling me that he could not remember much about the trip to the doctor. However, when he finally walked out of the doctor’s room with his fingers bandaged, Mr. Peal was sitting in the waiting room with his mother and sister.
“He said he would drive us back to Rosemont so we could catch the last train home. On the way back he told us that he had no grandchildren, but that his next-door neighbors had a daughter named Sarah around my age, so he knew how Mom must have felt. You must be Sarah, I guess. When you see Mr. Peal again, tell him that I’m majoring in music ? guitar! My hand is perfectly fine.”
“I’ll do that,” I answered.
Our university is large, and I never again met the student who had told me this story. But I did see Mr. Peal again. I see him with new eyes now, and I am glad I have a neighbor like him.
- Why were the young man and his sister making a small pool?
① They wanted to take some fish home.
② They wanted to swim somewhere safely.
③ They wanted to watch the fish swim,
④ They wanted somewhere cool and comfortable to rest. - Where were the mother and her children going when they met Mr. Peal?
① To Sunnydale.
② To the nearest town.
③ To a mountain stream.
④ To the bus stop. - How did Mr. Peal help the three get to the doctor?
① He took them to the doctor’s in his own truck.
② He told them the doctor was out of town.
③ He asked his neighbor to take them in the neighbor’s car.
④ He drove them to the nearest bus stop. - After the young man found out Sarah was Mr. Peal’s neighbor, why did he decide to tell the story?
① He wanted to share an important experience in his life.
② He wanted to persuade Sarah to change her opinion.
③ lie wanted to tell his friends about a good place for fishing.
④ He wanted to thank Mr. Peal for teaching him guitar. - What did Sarah learn from the young man in the cafeteria?
① She realized that her childhood impression was mistaken.
② She learned that she could make new friends easily.
③ She found out one of her classmates was a neighbor.
④ She discovered a new stream in the mountains.
