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儿童故事集:Katie and No More Miss Perfect

时间:2016-08-24 08:00来源:互联网 提供网友:yajing   字体: [ ]
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    (单词翻译:双击或拖选)

 Katie the Ordinary Witch.

 
We have often told you that katie’s best friend is perfect. Her name is Isis and she has perfect hair, perfect grades, perfect toenails – well you know the rest – perfect everything. Isis was pretty pleased with the way she had turned out except for one thing. This ‘perfection’ had been bothering her for a while, and one lunchtime she asked Katie about it.
 
“Do you think it’s boring to be perfect?”
 
Katie munched1 her less than perfect school meal and thought for a moment. She asked herself: “Should you always tell your friend the truth? Even if it might annoy her?” She swallowed the lumpy mashed2 potato. Feeling a tad reckless, she blurted3 out: “Well I can see why some people find perfection irritating.”
 
She spoke4 the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
 
Only the other day, Katerina had said: “If Miss Perfect Pants tells me one more time that my socks don’t match, I am going to climb out onto the school roof and scream: “My socks don’t match because I’m not perfect! And so what, Isis?” Yes, Katerina seemed pretty irritated with Isis’s perfection.
 
And Katie could tell that their teachers were irritated that Isis always had her hand up to answer every question. Was there nothing they could ask that Isis didn’t already know?
 
Even Katie sometimes thought: “It’s not Isis’s fault that she’s perfect, but I do wish my mum would stop saying that I should be as tidy, polite, and hardworking as she is, because that really gets my goat.”
 
So when Katie said that perfection could be irritating she was only telling her friend the truth. It was a brave thing to do, perhaps too brave, because Isis’s perfectly5 white skin turned a furious shade of pink. In fact, she behaved in a most un-Isis like way, pointing a fork with a Brussel sprout6 on it at Katie and demanding: “Who says I’m irritating?”
 
Katie knew she was in a hole, and whatever she said would be wrong. She ventured:
 
“Nobody actually says you are irritating but sometimes I can feel it.”
 
“Oh you can, can you?” said Isis angrily. “In that case I will go and eat my lunch on another table so as not to irritate you with my perfect table manners!”
 
And with that she picked up her tray and went to join Isadora and Desdemonia who were her friends from their Latin class. Latin was not the most popular option. As a matter of fact, only three people had chosen it, and they were all A grade students. In their exclusive little club it was irritating to achieve less than 100% perfection.
 
Over the next few days Isis avoided Katie and hung around with her A grade friends. They checked each other’s homework and tested each other on Latin grammar such as the verb ‘mittere’ – to send – which goes:
 
mitto
mittere
misi
missum.
 
Isis lectured: “Don’t you remember, Desdemonia, Mr Case told us that there is one s in ‘misi’ and two ses in ‘missum’?”
 
Desdemonia arched her eyebrow7 in annoyance8. “I’m sorry Isis, we can’t all remember Latin past participles as perfectly as you do,” she said indignantly.
 
And Isis thought: “Et tu Desdemonia – even you think my perfection is irritating.”
 
The following day at lunch, Isis couldn’t help herself telling Isadora not to hold her fork upside down. Her friend looked exasperated9. She did not like being lectured on her table manners, thank you very much.
 
And when Mr Smart the maths teacher handed back the homework, he said: “I’m still waiting for the day when Isis makes a silly mistake.” He probably meant it as praise, but Isis was feeling sensitive and thought that her perfection was irritating him too.
 
The last straw came on Friday when even her mother said: “Most mothers tell me that their daughters cause them no end of worry but you darling are too good to be true.”
 
And Isis thought: “Too good to be true? Does my own mother think I am fake?” And she went to her room to sulk while listening to piano music by Felix Mendelssohn, who was Queen Victoria’s favourite composer, and Isis’s too.
 
Katie was pleasantly surprised when Isis gave her a bright “hello” the next morning. She was relieved that her best friend was talking to her once again. Before they went into class, Isis whispered:
 
“You know what, Katie? Ever since you said that perfection can be irritating, I’ve noticed all sorts of people are giving me funny looks, like they don’t really like me. Even my mum seems to think I’m too perfect. You’re the only person who can help me, Katie. Do one of your wonderful spells and make me imperfect?”
 
“Why on earth would you want me to do that?” asked Katie, astonished.
 
“Oh Katie, I’ve been lying awake for three nights. I haven’t slept at all, I’ve been thinking so much!”
 
“But you don’t look tired at all. You’re as fresh as a daisy!”
 
“I know, my complexion10 is always perfect whether I’m deprived of sleep or not. Irritating isn’t it?” said Isis. “You see, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not at all cool to be perfect. I’ve realised it is much, much cooler to be imperfect. Then, everyone will like me, and not be irritated by me.”
 
“But I love you as my best friend even though you’re perfect!” protested Katie.
 
“But nobody else does! They all think I’m irritating, you said so yourself Katie. Go on, please do this for me. Make me imperfect. Give me spots. Make me rude. Make me do naughty things. Let me make some careless mistakes in my maths homework. I want to escape this perfect self. Let me know what it feels like to be normal. Do this for me Katie please… I beg you?”
 
And since her friend was begging her so much, Katie agreed to look for a suitable spell and do this for her. When people asked her to do a spell, they seemed to think that she could just wrinkle her nose or snap her fingers, and it would all happen in an instant. But actually, in most cases, she had to go home and do a lot of research. It isn’t easy you know, or else everyone would be doing it. That evening she searched long and hard for a suitable spell.
 
Now, when a perfect person wakes up in the morning, looks in the bathroom mirror, and sees a spot on the end of her nose, the first thing she usually does is scream, because perfect people don’t have spots.
 
But the next morning, Isis did have one! Right on the end of her perfect nose. She was about to scream when she thought: “Actually, this is good news. Katie must have done the spell. I’m not perfect anymore. Hurray! I’m a normal person!”
 
And she went downstairs to breakfast with a happy smile on her face, and instead of eating a pink grapefruit, as she usually did, she chose a cereal with flakes11 that were 75% sugar and 25% chocolate.
 
“Eee-Yuk!” she thought. “Is this what normal people eat? It’s disgusting, but I’d better get used to it.”
 
At school, the first person to notice Isis’s spot was Desdemona: “Oh poor little you,” she said sympathetically. “You’ve got acne.”
 
Isis knew that Desdemona’s supposed sympathy was actually thinly disguised pleasure at seeing her friend’s fall from perfection. As she was a grade A student, she even knew a long German word that people use to describe enjoyment12 in other people’s misfortune:
 
‘Schadenfreude.’
 
And she said: “Desdemonia, do I detect a touch of schadenfreude?”
 
Her friend looked baffled, so she thought: “I had better not use long words anymore, because they make me look like Little Miss Smarty Pants.”
 
She loosened her tie a little bit, and went to listen to Isabelle, who was talking about the latest trendy teenage YouTuber who documented every boring detail of her normal life on video. Isis had never watched YouTube, but now that she was a normal person, she thought she had better learn more about it.
 
In maths, Mr Smart posed a problem that nobody could answer because it was too early in the morning for normal people to strain their brains.
 
“If Jack13 has 32 stickers, and Jill has twice as many, how many do they have all together?”
 
Eventually he said: “Isis, please enlighten these half-asleep zombies as to the correct answer?”
 
And Isis replied: “Sorry Sir, I was thinking about something else.”
 
And Mr Smart wondered if something dreadful had happened in Isis’s life, because it was the first time that she had ever been caught out of not concentrating.
 
Instead of feeling embarrassed by her slip-up, Isis was pleased: “Imperfection feels good,” she thought. “I feel more likable.”
 
But as they were leaving class, she overheard Samantha saying: “Did you hear the smashing sound when Isis fell off her pedestal?”
 
And Isis thought: “It will take a while for people to get used to the new me.”
 
It was a beautiful summer’s day, but instead of taking a walk around the hockey field at lunchtime, Isis stayed inside and visited the Dungeons14 and Dragons club in room 4E. She had absolutely no idea why the dorkish boys spent an hour pushing weird15 plastic figures around a board, but it was interesting research into how imperfect people waste their time without the aid of electronic devices.
 
“Yes,” she reasoned, “I’ve got to find a way to waste more of my own time without doing anything useful or enlightening.”
 
That evening she tried to listen to pop music in her bedroom with the volume on full blast, but it was so horrible that she had to give up after 20 minutes.
 
“It’s going to take training and discipline to change my tastes,” Isis decided16.
 
Then she sat down to do her homework. She set a timer on her phone to make sure she did it in half the usual time. It was a mad rush, and she couldn’t check anything. As she closed her books, she felt satisfied: “I think that was sufficiently17 careless.”
 
Then she tried to untidy her room. “Actually,” she thought, as she dropped a teddy bear on the floor, “this is harder than it looks because I don’t actually like it untidy.” She took some socks out of a drawer and threw them at random18. “Ugh, this is going to take some getting used to!”
 
It took about a week for people to really start worrying about Isis. Mr Smart spoke to Miss Vile19, who was Isis’s form teacher, and asked if she was aware of any family problems that might be effecting the star pupil’s concentration.
 
“Yes, I’m glad you mentioned Isis,” said Miss Vile, “because I’m concerned about her too. I’ll give her a friday detention20. I expect that will sort her out.”
 
“But don’t you think that perhaps she’s under too much pressure to be perfect already?” asked Mr Smart?
 
Miss Vile replied: “Nonsense! We owe it to gifted pupils, and to their parents, to push them to their limit and beyond!”
 
“Ah yes,” said Mr Case, who happened to be nearby. “Per ardua ad astra.”
 
“Exactly,” said Miss Vile. And the next day she put Isis in detention for careless homework.
 
Isis made sure that she reported to detention on friday five minutes late. Samantha and Isabel were already there when she walked into the room. Isabel complained to Mr Old, who was in charge of detention that week:
 
“Please Sir, can you put Isis in another detention for being late?” to which Mr Old replied: “Mind your own business, young Miss.”
 
When they were finally released, Samantha confronted Isis: “What’s happened to you? You’re suddenly in trouble all the time!”
 
Isis replied honestly:
 
“I just got fed up with being perfect and I’m trying to be more interesting.”
 
“You’ll never succeed,” retorted Isabel. “You were born Miss Goody Two Shoes and you’ll always be boring.”
 
“I will succeed,” responded Isis, “because whenever I put my mind to something, I always manage to achieve it.”
 
“In that case,” suggested Samantha, “come over to my house and we’ll see if you can pass the fun person challenge.”
 
And since Isis was determined21 to show that she was up for anything, she agreed.

点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 munched c9456f71965a082375ac004c60e40170     
v.用力咀嚼(某物),大嚼( munch的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句:
  • She munched on an apple. 她在大口啃苹果。
  • The rabbit munched on the fresh carrots. 兔子咯吱咯吱地嚼着新鲜胡萝卜。 来自辞典例句
2 mashed Jotz5Y     
a.捣烂的
参考例句:
  • two scoops of mashed potato 两勺土豆泥
  • Just one scoop of mashed potato for me, please. 请给我盛一勺土豆泥。
3 blurted fa8352b3313c0b88e537aab1fcd30988     
v.突然说出,脱口而出( blurt的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句:
  • She blurted it out before I could stop her. 我还没来得及制止,她已脱口而出。
  • He blurted out the truth, that he committed the crime. 他不慎说出了真相,说是他犯了那个罪。 来自《简明英汉词典》
4 spoke XryyC     
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说
参考例句:
  • They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
  • The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。
5 perfectly 8Mzxb     
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地
参考例句:
  • The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
  • Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。
6 sprout ITizY     
n.芽,萌芽;vt.使发芽,摘去芽;vi.长芽,抽条
参考例句:
  • When do deer first sprout horns?鹿在多大的时候开始长出角?
  • It takes about a week for the seeds to sprout.这些种子大约要一周后才会发芽。
7 eyebrow vlOxk     
n.眉毛,眉
参考例句:
  • Her eyebrow is well penciled.她的眉毛画得很好。
  • With an eyebrow raised,he seemed divided between surprise and amusement.他一只眉毛扬了扬,似乎既感到吃惊,又觉有趣。
8 annoyance Bw4zE     
n.恼怒,生气,烦恼
参考例句:
  • Why do you always take your annoyance out on me?为什么你不高兴时总是对我出气?
  • I felt annoyance at being teased.我恼恨别人取笑我。
9 exasperated ltAz6H     
adj.恼怒的
参考例句:
  • We were exasperated at his ill behaviour. 我们对他的恶劣行为感到非常恼怒。
  • Constant interruption of his work exasperated him. 对他工作不断的干扰使他恼怒。
10 complexion IOsz4     
n.肤色;情况,局面;气质,性格
参考例句:
  • Red does not suit with her complexion.红色与她的肤色不协调。
  • Her resignation puts a different complexion on things.她一辞职局面就全变了。
11 flakes d80cf306deb4a89b84c9efdce8809c78     
小薄片( flake的名词复数 ); (尤指)碎片; 雪花; 古怪的人
参考例句:
  • It's snowing in great flakes. 天下着鹅毛大雪。
  • It is snowing in great flakes. 正值大雪纷飞。
12 enjoyment opaxV     
n.乐趣;享有;享用
参考例句:
  • Your company adds to the enjoyment of our visit. 有您的陪同,我们这次访问更加愉快了。
  • After each joke the old man cackled his enjoyment.每逢讲完一个笑话,这老人就呵呵笑着表示他的高兴。
13 jack 53Hxp     
n.插座,千斤顶,男人;v.抬起,提醒,扛举;n.(Jake)杰克
参考例句:
  • I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
  • He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。
14 dungeons 2a995b5ae3dd26fe8c8d3d935abe4376     
n.地牢( dungeon的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • The captured rebels were consigned to the dungeons. 抓到的叛乱分子被送进了地牢。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • He saw a boy in fetters in the dungeons. 他在地牢里看见一个戴着脚镣的男孩。 来自辞典例句
15 weird bghw8     
adj.古怪的,离奇的;怪诞的,神秘而可怕的
参考例句:
  • From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来,他好像有点怪。
  • His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。
16 decided lvqzZd     
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的
参考例句:
  • This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
  • There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
17 sufficiently 0htzMB     
adv.足够地,充分地
参考例句:
  • It turned out he had not insured the house sufficiently.原来他没有给房屋投足保险。
  • The new policy was sufficiently elastic to accommodate both views.新政策充分灵活地适用两种观点。
18 random HT9xd     
adj.随机的;任意的;n.偶然的(或随便的)行动
参考例句:
  • The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
  • On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查,发现肉变质了。
19 vile YLWz0     
adj.卑鄙的,可耻的,邪恶的;坏透的
参考例句:
  • Who could have carried out such a vile attack?会是谁发起这么卑鄙的攻击呢?
  • Her talk was full of vile curses.她的话里充满着恶毒的咒骂。
20 detention 1vhxk     
n.滞留,停留;拘留,扣留;(教育)留下
参考例句:
  • He was kept in detention by the police.他被警察扣留了。
  • He was in detention in connection with the bribery affair.他因与贿赂事件有牵连而被拘留了。
21 determined duszmP     
adj.坚定的;有决心的
参考例句:
  • I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
  • He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。
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