2．
阅读理解
We once had a poster
competition in our fifth grade art class.
"You can win
prizes," our teacher told us as she wrote the poster information on the
blackboard. She passed out pieces of construction paper while continuing,"
The first prize is ten dollars. You just have to make sure that the words on
the blackboard appear somewhere on your poster."
We studied the
blackboard carefully. Some of us looked with one eye and held up certain
colours against the blackboard to make an outline for their designs. Others
twisted their hair around their fingers while deep in thought. We had plans for
that ten-dollar prize, each and every one of us. "I'm going to spend mine
on candies," one hopeful would say, while another practised looking
serious, wise and rich.
Everyone in the class
made a poster. Some of us used parts of those fancy paper napkins, while others
used nothing but the coloured construction paper. Some of us would go past the
good students' desks and then return to our own desks with a growing sense of
hopelessness. It was an adult's trick. They seemed especially fond of making
all of us believe we had a fair chance, and then always -always -giving prizes
to the same old winners. .
I believe I drew a
sailing boat, but I wasn't sure about that myself. I made it. I admired it. I determined
it to be the very best of all of the posters I had seen, and then I turned it
in.
Minutes passed. No one
came along to give me the prize， and then
someone distracted me, and I probably never would have thought about that
poster again. I was still sitting at my desk, thinking nothing until the
teacher gave me an envelope with ten dollars in it. Everyone in the class
cheered for me.
