Unit-5-Fourteen-Steps课文翻译综合教程二

admin管理员组

文章数量:1532269

2024年5月23日发(作者：)

Unit 5 Fourteen Steps

Hal Manwaring

1 They say a cat has nine lives,

1

and I am inclined to think that possible since I

am now living my third life and I’m not even a cat. My first life began on a clear,

cold day in November 1934, when I arrived as the sixth of eight children of a

farming family. My father died when I was 15, and we had a hard struggle to make

a living. As the children grew up, they married, leaving only one sister and myself

to support and care for Mother, who became paralyzed in her last years and died

while still in her 60s. My sister married soon after, and I followed her example

within the year.

2 This was when I began to enjoy my first life. I was very happy, in excellent

health, and quite a good athlete. My wife and I became the parents of two lovely

girls. I had a good job in San Jose and a beautiful home up the peninsula in San

Carlos. Life was a pleasant dream. Then the dream ended. I became afflicted with a

slowly progressive disease of the motor nerves, affecting first my right arm and leg,

and then my other side. Thus began my second life …

3 In spite of my disease I still drove to and from work each day, with the aid of

special equipment installed in my car. And I managed to keep my health and

optimism, to a degree, because of 14 steps.

4 Crazy? Not at all. Our home was a split-level affair with 14 steps leading up

学习文档 仅供参考

from the garage to the kitchen door. Those steps were a gauge of life. They were

my yardstick, my challenge to continue living. I felt that if the day arrived when I

was unable to lift one foot up one step and then drag the other painfully after it —

repeating the process 14 times until, utterly spent, I would be through — I could

then admit defeat and lie down and die.

2

So I kept on working, kept on climbing

those steps. And time passed. The girls went to college and were happily married,

and my wife and I were alone in our beautiful home with the 14 steps.

5 You might think that here walked a man of courage and strength. Not so.

Here hobbled a bitterly disillusioned cripple, a man who held on to his sanity and

his wife and his home and his job because of 14 miserable steps leading up to the

back door from his garage.

3

As I became older, I became more disillusioned and

frustrated.

6 Then on a dark night in August, 1971, I began my third life. It was raining

when I started home that night; gusty winds and slashing rain beat down on the

car as I drove slowly down one of the less-traveled roads.

4

Suddenly the steering

wheel jerked in my hands and the car swerved violently to the right. In the same

instant I heard the dreaded bang of a blowout. I fought the car to stop on the

rain-slick shoulder of the road and sat there as the enormity of the situation swept

over me.

5

It was impossible for me to change that tire! Utterly impossible! A

thought that a passing motorist might stop was dismissed at once. Why should

anyone? I knew I wouldn’t! Then I remembered that a short distance up a little

side road was a house. I started the engine and thumped slowly along, keeping

well over on the shoulder until I came to the dirt road, where I turned in —

学习文档 仅供参考

本文标签： 课文文档翻译综合学习