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Alex:So, how was your weekend then? Did you do anything interesting?
Betsy:No, not really, but it was nice to have some hot weather for a change.
Alex: Yeah, it was great, wasn’t it? Were you out much then?
Betsy: I went to the beach on Saturday with some friends. We went scuba diving just off the coast. My friend’s dad is an instructor at a diving club and he lent us all the diving equipment free of charge. We did a bit of sunbathing after that to warm up, because the temperature of the water was quite low. So what did you do then?
Alex: I had to work on Saturday. I’ve got a Saturday job stacking shelves in the local supermarket. I was absolutely shattered at the end of the shift, which finished after nine o’clock at night.
Betsy: That’s late. I hope the pay’s good, if you have to work that late.
Alex: The pay’s not too bad and there are quite a few perks with the job. I get a twenty per cent discount for instance, on every purchase I make. So I don’t mind working late once a week. There was still time to do something after work, though. I went to Tony’s birthday party afterwards. Nearly everybody from our class was there. Why didn’t you come then?
Betsy: Well I was planning to, but we decided to stay late on the beach and have a barbecue. It was great. We also played some really good music. Yes, we all had a good time and stayed there quite late. I didn’t get home till past midnight in fact.
Alex: Yes, the party went on quite late as well. A lot of people just stayed overnight, but I went home at about two in the morning. I had to get up quite early on Sunday, because my grandparents were coming round for lunch. And what did you do on Sunday? Anything special?
Betsy: No, not really. I got up quite late and just sat around for a couple of hours reading the Sunday papers. It was good to just stretch out on the sofa and read in peace and quiet. I had to do some work on my geography project then. That took a couple of hours and then I had a few friends round and we just sat and chatted and listened to music. I was pretty tired after the party on Saturday night.
Recently I’ve got my pilot’s license for a single engine aircraft. I got interested in flying a plane because of … You see our chemistry teacher in high school was also an instructor. He was completely fanatical about aircrafts. He knew that my father had a plane, just the one he had always wanted to have. It was a good plane! Strangely, my father had never suggested that I go on an aviation science. I guess I would have never learnt to fly a plane but for my teacher. Thanks to him I went to the local airport. There I took a discovery flight for 20 dollars. The day was beautiful, the sky was clear when we did it. The instructors were nice. They fly you around and when you’re in the air they let you actually handle the plane. For a minute or two I was controlling the aircraft, which was great! Unfortunately, my dad had never allowed me to handle his plane. So I signed up right away to be on my track to getting my license. They said it’d take about a year or a little more, for some people it takes a lot longer to get their license. There’s a minimum of fifty-five hours of flight time. You have to fly at night, to do solo time and all that stuff. So I started off and I was doing pretty well. I enjoyed the course immensely.
Time flies. It was the end of the school year and my final exams were fast approaching. I still had a month and a half before I was supposed to get my license. I was planning on getting my license around the same time when I was supposed to go off to college. My actual instructor had left somewhere so I got a new one. My new instructor started quizzing me on the stuff that I was supposed to know and I was like “Have never heard about it” and he was like “You’re supposed to have learned these chapters by now”. He expected that my old instructor had told me like “Learn this chapter for the beginning of October and that chapter for the middle of November”, but he hadn’t. So I had to take a written test on all the theory behind the flying. I really had to study hard for my test in a week. Luckily, I passed it and I got eighty-two points. You had to get seventy points or above to pass. Eighty-two is nothing to be proud of actually. It was a pretty easy test but eighty-two is just fine with me. And then it turned out that I needed more hours of flying because they had changed the regulations on getting a license a week before I was going to get my license. That meant that I had to keep flying with my instructor on weekends. It was really annoying and
that took another five months. I remember being completely heartbroken and there was a time when I was ready to quit the whole thing but then … my family was like “We are not wasting all this money for you not to get your license”. All in all it probably totalled about a little over three thousand dollars to get my license.
One day I had to do an extended flight for I think three hundred miles. My instructor made me do some things that are really nerve wracking, and they made me sick in my stomach. I really hated doing them and I was really glad that we stopped at the point when we did it because I was feeling pale and cold and not in good condition. At last my instructor said “All right you’ve passed the test, just land the plane.” Finally I got my license. I’ve had it for nine months now, yeah nine months, and I haven’t flown much since then. But I’m planning on going to the nearby airport here at college and getting checked out so I can fly on a regular basis once a month or once a week if time permits
Sometimes my father scares me. He can tackle something he knows nothing about, and nine times out of ten, it will come out all right. It’s pure luck, of course, but try convincing him. “Frame of Mind,” he says. “Just believe you can do a thing, and you’ll do it.” “Anything?” I asked. “Some day your luck will run out. Then see what good your Frame of Mind will do,” I said.
Believe me, I am not just being a smart alec. It so happens that I have actually tried Frame of Mind myself. The first time was the year I went all out to pass the civics final. I had to go all out, on account of I had not cracked a book all year. I really crammed, and all the time I was cramming I was concentrating on Frame of Mind. Just believe you can do a thing – sure. I made the lowest score in the history of Franklin High. “Thirty-three percent,” I said, showing my father the report card. “There’s your Frame of Mind for you.” He put it on the table without looking at it. “You have to reach a certain age and understanding,” he explained. “That’s the key to Frame of Mind.” “Yeah? What does a guy do in the meantime?” “Maybe you should study. Some kids learn a lot that way.”
That was my first experience with Frame of Mind. My latest one was for a promotion at the Austin Clothing Store. Jim Watson had a slightly better sales record and was more knowledgeable and skillful. Me, I had Frame of Mind. Jim Watson got the job. Did this convince my father? It did not. To convince him, something had to happen. To him, I mean. Something did happen, too, at the Austin Clothing Store. My father works there, too. What happened was that Mr Austin paid good money for a clever Easter window display. It’s all set up and we’re about to draw the curtain when we discover the display lights won’t work. I can see Mr Austin growing pale. He is thinking of the customers that could go right by his store in the time it will take him to get hold of an electrician.
This is when my father comes on the scene. “Is something the matter?” he says. “Oh, hello, Louis,” Mr Austin says. He calls my father “Louis.” Me, Joe Conklin – one of his best salesmen – he hardly knows. My father, a stock clerk, he calls “Louis.” Life isn’t always fair. “These darned lights won’t work.” “H’mm, I see,” my father says. “Maybe I can be of service.” From inside his pocket comes a screwdriver. Mr Austin looks at him. “Can you help us, Louis?” “No, he cannot,” I volunteer. “You think he’s Thomas Edison?” I don’t intend to say that. It just slips out. “Young man, I was addressing your father,” Mr Austin says, giving me a cold hard look. My father touches something with his screwdriver and the display lights go on.
What happened next was that the big safe in Mr Austin’s office got jammed shut with all our paychecks in it. From nowhere comes my father. “Is something the matter?” he says. “The safe, Louis,” Mr Austin is saying. “It
won’t open, I was going to send for you.” “H’mm, I see,” my father says. “Can you help us, Louis?” Mr Austin inquires. I start to say he cannot, but I stop myself. If my father wants to be a clown, that’s his business. “What is the combination of this safe?” my father says. Mr Austin whispers the combination in my father’s ear. Armed with the combination, he starts twirling the knob. I can’t believe it: grown men and women standing hypnotized, expecting that safe door to open. And while they stand there, the safe door opens.
“Go ahead, say it was luck, my opening the safe today,” my father says. “OK,” I reply. Then I tell him what I saw in the faces of those people in Mr Austin’s office: confidence and trust and respect. “The key to Frame of Mind is you have to use it to give support to those who need it when there’s no one else to save the situation. Otherwise it will not work.”
'It's Only Me'
After her husband had gone to work, Mrs Richards sent her children to school and went upstairs to her bedroom. She was too excited to do any housework that morning, because in the evening she would be going to a fancy dress A22 ______ with her husband. She intended to dress up as a ghost and she had made her costume the night before. Now she was
A23 ______ to try it on. Though the costume consisted only of a sheet, it was very effective. Mrs Richards put it A24 ______, looked in the mirror, smiled and went downstairs. She wanted to find out whether it would be A25 ______ to wear.
Just as Mrs Richards was entering the dining-room, there was a
A26 ______ on the front door. She knew that it must be the baker. She had told him to come straight in if ever she failed to open the door and to leave the bread on the kitchen table. Not wanting to A27 ______ the poor man,
Mrs Richards quickly hid in the small store-room under the stairs. She heard the front door open and heavy footsteps in the hall. Suddenly the door of the store-room was opened and a man entered. Mrs Richards realized that it must be the man from the Electricity Board who had come to read the meter. She tried to A28 ______ the situation, saying 'It's only me', but it was too late. The man let out a cry and jumped back several paces. When Mrs Richards walked towards him, he ran away, slamming the door behind him
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