PART 1 Expressions
1.Puberty was not kind to me.
puberty [ˈpju:bəti] 青春期
Fourteen is a fairly normal age for a girl to reach puberty.
2. They started on my forehead, spread down the sides of my face, and covered my cheeks and neck and ravaged me everywhere.
ravage: [ˈrævɪdʒ] to damage something very badly
a country ravaged by civil war
His health was gradually ravaged by drink and drugs.
3.Murphy’s Law, the year my mom started buying my clothes too big was the year that I stopped growing.
Murphy's Law 墨菲定律：If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.
根据墨菲定律:
1. 任何事情都没有表面看起来那么简单
2. 所有的事都会比你预期的时间长
3. 会出错的事总会出错
4. 如果你担心某种情况发生，那么它就更有可能发生
4. Johanna and I had been at the same school intermittently our whole lives.
intermittently [ˌɪntə'mɪtəntlɪ] 间歇地；断断续续地
Still another system is designed to send out transient pulses intermittently.
The weather forecast is for sun, with intermittent showers.
5. At a certain point I decided to map out a strategy.
map sth out: to plan carefully how something will happen
Her own future had been mapped out for he by wealthy and adoring parents.
6. I bided my time through it all.
bide: 等待；停留 to wait or stay somewhere for a long time
bide one's time: to wait until the right moment to do sth
They are stronger than us and can afford to bide their time.
7. She’d hit me with so much information at once, first that Zaheera was gone, then that she had left for America, and then that she’d liked me all along.
all along: all the time from the beginning, while sth was happening
They should have known all along that she was lying.
8. My mind raced through all the hours we’d spent talking on the quad, on the phone, ...
race: if your heart or mind races, it works harder and faster than usual, for example because you are afraid or excited
My heart was racing and my knees shook uncontrollably.
My mind was racing, trying to think where I had seen him before.
PART 2 Reflections
"But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. 'What if ...' 'If only...' 'I wonder what would have...' You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days."
Reading the story of Trevor’s puppy love, I can’t help thinking if Trevor had the grit to take the initiative or if Zaheera did not emigrate, would they have a happy ending like those of fairy tales? I think the answer is in the negative. Zaheera remains perfect in Trevor’s memory because they missed each other. It is the regret rooted in Trevor’s heart that made Zaheera’s foibles invisible and her charms glowing. Had they been together, they might have quarrels and confrontations. After all, life isn’t a fairy tale, and you don’t always have happy endings.
I believe all along that regrets are not necessarily evil and they even sometimes make our insipid life dramatic and fascinating. Rabindranath Tagore once said in Stray Birds,“If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.” Regrets are dreadful only when you can’t let them go and move on. If you have missed out an opportunity to make big bucks and ended up being mediocre, there must a reason for it. If two people are meant to be together, they will meet again come hell or high water. All in all, yesterday is history and the trick for happiness today is to relish the regrets rather than let them haunt you for the rest of your life.
PART 3 Summary
Trevor was voracious and hyperactive in his childhood. He had a criminal and cop relationship with his mother. When his mother wrote him accusatory letters for his misbehaviors, he would find the loopholes and write counterarguments in reply. At Maryvale, whenever he thought a rule was illogical, he would find his way around it. For example, he was not allowed to communion because he's not Catholic. Dying for grape juice and crackers offered in communion, he broke the rules by furtively drinking an entire bottle of grape juice and an entire bag of Eucharist. A priest turned Trevor in and thus he ended up being punished by the school and sent to a shrink. Before long, Trevor quitted school after the principal threatened to expel him if he did not shape up. To his surprise, his mother did not give him a good hiding but instead sided with him. Among other claims to fame, Trevor was notorious for burning down a white family's house where his mother's boyfriend Abel rented a garage. One of Trevor's uncle even dubbed him "Terror".
Trevor used to raise two dogs named Panther and Fufi. Panther was his mother's dog and Fufi was his. Unwitting to Fufi's deafness, Trevor thought she was extremely dumb. In spite of this, he loved Fufi whole-heartedly, coddled her and even shared bed with her. One day, Trevor furtively tailed Fufi and found out that she scaled the wall and went to another boy's house during the day. The two kids and their mothers had quarrels over the ownership of Fufi. Although Fufi was taken back home after Trevor's mother paid a hundred rand, Fufi broke Trevor's heart. The experience profoundly shaped his thoughts about relationships.
Trevor called his father Robert because "dad", "daddy" and such like might be overheard and get them into trouble under apartheid. Trevor used to spend Sunday afternoons, his birthdays and Christmas with his dad but they were completely out of contact after Robert left the town. Thanks to his mother's compliments, Trevor never turned to bitterness towards his dad. Turning into 24, Trever was asked by his mother to track his father down. He eventually reconnected this secretive man through Swiss embassy. Knowing that his father remembered his tastes and kept following him in this ten-year gap, Trevor was overwhelmed with a flood of emotions.
Under apartheid, people are easier to accept an outsider trying to be assimilated than to accept an insider who are not exactly homogenous. Trevor had a hard time dealing with the animosity from the colored people when living in Eden Park. He was once bullied by a gang of colored boys a few years older than him. He was picking mulberries and a boy started cursing him out of the blue. Trevor ignored them and they started pelting him with berries. Abel got the revenge for him by beating the ringleader hard. However, the initial delight Trevor got from the retaliation was soon replaced by remorse.
When the first Valentine's Day at H.A jack was approaching, Trevor was egged on by other kids to ask Maylene, the only colored girl in school, to be his girlfriend. Although Trevor had no crush on Maylene, he was told that Maylene had a thing for him and he liked the idea of being liked. Therefore, he began to chase Maylene. Things went on smoothly. Maylene liked him, they kissed and Trevor was overwhelmed with the excitement of having a valentine. He prepared flowers, a teddy bear and a card, in which he wrote a poem with Maylene's name. The Valentine's Day rolled around, Trevor waited for Maylene to show up, only to be told that she chose a good-looking white boy over him and she ditched him on the spot.
Trevor started eighth grade at Sandringham High School, a mix of government and private school which drew kids from all over. Still, as the only mixed kid in the school, Trevor didn't fit in any group. Besides, he was strapped and couldn't even afford buses. The predicament was broken down when people started to approach him, paying him to buy snacks for them from the tuck shop. The rich white kids saved their break time and Trevor made a big a fortune from the errands. More importantly, Trevor learnt to move seamlessly between different groups and found his niche by sharing his sense of humor.
In his puberty, Trevor felt inferior to others in appearance and he was still under the shadow of his Valentine's Day heartbreak. Therefore, he did not have the courage to date girls. He secretly had a huge crush on Zaheera, a pretty and funny girl and hung out with her every chance he got. He thought Zaheera was out of his league and mapped out a long-term strategy, planning to win her over bit by bit. Not until Zaheera emigrated to America did he register that she had a thing for him. He regretted missing out every opportunity to ask her out.
