[英语情感故事Late,for,School] 电台情感故事文章
Late for School
All my life, I"ve had this recurring dream that causes me to wake up feeling strange. In it, I am a little girl again, rushing about, trying to get ready for school.
"Hurry, Gin, you"ll be late for school," my mother calls to me. I am hurrying, Mom! Where"s my lunch? What did I do with my books?"
Deep inside I know where the dream comes from and what it means. It is God"s way of reminding me of some unfinished business in my life.
I loved everything about school, even though the school I attended in Springfield, Ohio, in the 1920s was very strict. I loved books, teachers, even tests and homework. Most of all I longed to someday march down the aisle to the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance." To me, that song was even more beautiful than "Here Comes the Bride."
But there were problems.
The Great Depression hit the hardest at large, poor families like ours. With seven children, Mom and Dad had no money for things like fine school clothes. Every morning, I cut out strips of cardboard to stuff inside my shoes to cover the holes in the soles. There was no money for musical instruments or sports uniforms or after-school treats. We sang to ourselves, played jacks or duck-on-the-rock, and munched on onions as we did homework.
These hardships I accepted. As long as I could go to school, I didn"t mind too much how I looked or what I lacked.
What happened next was harder to accept. My brother Paul died of an infection after he accidentally stabbed himself in the eye with a fork. Then my father contracted tuberculosis and died. My sister, Margaret, caught the same disease, and soon she was gone, too.
The shock of these losses gave me an ulcer, and I fell behind in my schoolwork. Meanwhile, my widowed mother tried to keep going on the five dollars a week she made cleaning houses. Her face became a mask of despair.
One day I said to her, "Mom, I"m going to quit school and get a job to h