时间:2018-12-11 作者:英语课 分类:原版英文小故事


英语课

The old house was sold. A new house was yet to be purchased, so Randy was going to rent for a while. He was moving from Virginia to California. The move would put some memories behind him. He was looking forward to a fresh start.


Randy and Nora got married six years ago. It was the first marriage for both of them. Eight months after the marriage, Nora found out she was pregnant. That was good. When she started getting stomachaches, they figured it was the new baby. But then she miscarried.


The stomachaches, however, continued. In fact, they got worse. It wasn’t a simple stomachache. It was liver cancer. Then it was stomach cancer, lymph gland 1 cancer, breast cancer, and brain cancer. It never stopped spreading. There was little hope, but Nora battled the daily pain with smiles and few complaints.


After five years of doctors, hospitals, chemotherapy, and surgery, Nora lost the battle. More than one million dollars was spent on medical bills, more than ten thousand prayers were said by family and friends—all to no avail. The only time that Randy asked the doctor for his honest opinion, the doctor said, “She might have six months.” Nora died seven days later. Just before she died, she silently squeezed Randy’s hand.


The mover took six hours longer to load the moving van than he had estimated originally. Randy wondered how much extra this was going to cost him. After the mover and his crew had departed for California, Randy noticed a 3-foot scar in his new hardwood floor. It looked like the crew had dragged his heavy metal bed frame. Randy hoped the new homeowner wouldn’t complain about it too much. He wondered how many damaged goods were in the moving van right now.


The phone rang. It was the California-bound car transporter. He told Randy that his truck was at the corner of Fifth and Main, and he would wait for Randy there. Randy walked out to his car. In five minutes, he was at Fifth and Main. He gave the transporter the ignition key and watched him drive his car up the ramp 2 onto the truck. There were five other cars already on the truck. The transporter said, “I’ll call you in nine days,” and drove off. Randy hailed a cab.


Eleven days later, Randy got the call. The transporter said he would be in Milroy, Randy’s new town, in three hours. Five hours later, the transporter arrived. Randy watched as the transporter backed his car down the ramp. The car was filthy 3. The transporter explained that bad weather had slowed him down—tornadoes, rain, and dust storms. “No locusts 4?” Randy wondered to himself.


Randy drove his car to the carwash. While sitting in a chair waiting for the car to be finished, he saw a young pretty woman introduce herself to an aging TV reporter. She proceeded to laugh at his every word, touching 5 him occasionally on the hand and knee. Randy wondered if a woman would ever come on to him like that. Then he thought about Nora squeezing his hand.


 



1 gland
n.腺体,(机)密封压盖,填料盖
  • This is a snake's poison gland.这就是蛇的毒腺。
  • Her mother has an underactive adrenal gland.她的母亲肾上腺机能不全。
2 ramp
n.暴怒,斜坡,坡道;vi.作恐吓姿势,暴怒,加速;vt.加速
  • That driver drove the car up the ramp.那司机将车开上了斜坡。
  • The factory don't have that capacity to ramp up.这家工厂没有能力加速生产。
3 filthy
adj.卑劣的;恶劣的,肮脏的
  • The whole river has been fouled up with filthy waste from factories.整条河都被工厂的污秽废物污染了。
  • You really should throw out that filthy old sofa and get a new one.你真的应该扔掉那张肮脏的旧沙发,然后再去买张新的。
4 locusts
n.蝗虫( locust的名词复数 );贪吃的人;破坏者;槐树
  • a swarm of locusts 一大群蝗虫
  • In no time the locusts came down and started eating everything. 很快蝗虫就飞落下来开始吃东西,什么都吃。 来自《简明英汉词典》
5 touching
adj.动人的,使人感伤的
  • It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
  • His letter was touching.他的信很感人。
学英语单词
abhorring
acquired cleftpalate
advertence
aggrege
approximate true elongation percentage
aural detector
auto cutter
Berilo
bootlegs
bresnahan
capitalised value
chromises
clobedolum
cold atmospheric leaching
conjugata
conservativeness
container freight station to door
contextual protection
contract for carriage
copperas
cost-per-action
Crocethia
cryptanthus zonatus
cylindrical auger
Cymothoidae
deglutition centre
dilute phase roasting
disapprovest
discors
divergence
duking
echo-signal
electric resistance thermometer
endotransglycosylases
flash-over relay
garment container
hawksworth
hierarchical interrupt
hill-and-dale
Horheim
host unreachable
Indochinese, Indo-Chinese
inertially balanced stabilized platform
interchange circuits
kot
kuessel
Le Massegros
letter bundling machine
memory attribute list
micrometeoritic
MO-MLV
moroccoes
Mututu
naphthalic aicd
national grid compang
numbered unit
pain phosphorus
pallidotomies
parental rights and duties
partes subcutanea
payload deployment and retrieval system
petunia
platanthera chloranthas
platypelloid
porfiry
propagules
quenching crack
remi inferior ossis ischii
repair truck
Rhododendron aganniphum
rickson
scandium oxalate
sense of worth
servo surface encoding
set priorities
sidles
specification of quality
state guarantee
stony iron-meteorite
sulfuric acid monohydrate
sweet meat
tar-pot
ternity
transmitter distortion
trust fund bureau
two sample t-test
U Thant
unassailableness
undefined length record
under water concrete
valeriane
ventresca
vernier theodolite
Von Hippel-Lindau disease
way to go
weaponizing
weigelias
weightiest
wrast
yanagisawa
yowlings
zero check