My son’s first word was “bu-yao!” (“don’t want!”) in Mandarin and “No!” in English. Both within about a week of each other. We speak English in the house but my wife was trying to speak to him in Mandarin whenever possible.
The first (and only) time I did a tandem skydiving jump, I remember how calm I felt standing on the landing gear ready to step off, and how intense was the adrenaline rush the moment I felt my foot lose contact with the airplane. The wind made the goggles slip up to the bottom of my eyes so I couldn’t see the instructor signaling me to pull the cord, so he did – too late to avoid parachuting through a cloud.
I used to copy-edit college textbooks. A friend of mine who wrote several articles for a fanzine (and he was a good writer) would give me his work before publishing and initially he would get upset when I took a red pen and started marking it up with him watching over my shoulder like Wanda here. After he examined my markings (the pages were a sea of red marks), he realized I made his writing a lot better, and after that he considered it a challenge to give me stuff that didn’t need marking up, but I always managed to find some ways to improve it.
Reminds me of that line in the song “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” that goes “…and Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again!”
My son’s first word was “bu-yao!” (“don’t want!”) in Mandarin and “No!” in English. Both within about a week of each other. We speak English in the house but my wife was trying to speak to him in Mandarin whenever possible.