「故事·听力」I Was Late And Lost My Best Friend Forever
I Was Late And Lost My Best Friend Forever
This is Jenny, and she feels really helpless. Most things in her life are fine but there’s just one major problem. She’s always late for EVERYTHING.
She understands that she can only blame herself for this, but she honestly doesn’t know what to do.
Being late is never a problem when you’re a kid. Your parents take you to places and then you go back home – at least that’s what it was always like for her. But the good thing was that her mom and dad always valued her independence. Her parents care for her, but at the same time they let her make her own decisions and choices, so that she learns to control her own life.
And you know what? It seems to work. She’s sixteen now, and she’s already learned to figure out a lot of stuff on her own, so moving to college (for example) won’t be a huge problem for her.
The only thing that she constantly fails at is getting to places on time.
She can’t even remember when the last time was that she managed to catch the school bus, so she usually has to take the public one. More than that, she doesn’t really remember the last time she walked to the bus stop – because every time she has to run for it.
That’s not the worst part of it all, though – it’s not even the bad part. Jenny’s problems start when she gets to school. Different teachers react to students being late in different ways, as you guys know. Some of them don’t pay much attention, some even pretend they that they didn’t notice.
But the worst thing happens on Wednesdays, when her first class is chemistry. Her chemistry teacher, Mrs, Rodney, just goes crazy when someone’s even a minute late for her class. So imagine being yelled at every time you come in after the bell. She knows it’s all her fault, but a couple of times Mrs. Rodney just refused to let her in to the room and doubled her homework for the next week! That’s a bit too much!
Once they had a drama project, and Jenny’s actually done quite a lot of acting, ever since she was a kid. She knew she was the most experienced actor in the group, so she was quite sure the teacher was going to give her the main part. And he actually was, but…guess what…she was half an hour late for the first class of the year, and he gave the main role to another girl instead. And when this was happening she was chatting to her friends in the school yard, not even realizing the class had already started.
She’s tried a lot of different things to fix it. First of all, she tried to figure out what was wrong with her. “Where do I lose so much time?” she thought. And she soon realized that it was a couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there…and then you’re running late already. No matter how early she woke up, she still managed to lose all the time she had.
And it wasn’t only about mornings and being late for school. Every time her friends and Jenny went out, she was super-late. If they went to the movies, you could be sure that she’d be awkwardly sneaking between the rows fifteen minutes into the film.
The worst thing happened to Jenny about a month ago. Her friend Hannah and her family were moving to another state. They used to hang out a lot, along with two other friends – Jenny and Mike. So the three of them decided to see Hannah off at the airport.
They made a huge poster with their pictures and good wishes, because none of them knew when they might see her again. It was all prepared, Jenny set her alarm clock for early in the morning, and she actually woke up on time, had her breakfast...and then this THING happened again. In the blink of an eye she found herself running late to the bus stop.
Then the bus got stuck in traffic, and she lost another fifteen minutes. Jenny texted her asking where she was, but she was too embarrassed to answer, and she thought she’d still make it. Then she couldn’t find the right entrance at the airport, then there was the security check, and then…
She found Jenny and Mike standing in the departure zone, with Hannah and her parents gone. She hadn’t made it. She was late again.
She talked to Hannah afterwards, and she said that it was fine, but she knew it wasn’t. She might not see one of her best friends for years, and she had missed her chance to say goodbye.
It was devastating. But at least something good came out of it, as she finally realized that her problem was just destroying her life. She’s really working on it now. The thing she learnt recently is that if you want control over your life, you need to get stuff in order. Not just time management – everything!
She’s also thinking of getting a summer job when the school year ends, to earn some money to visit Hannah. She hopes she doesn’t get fired for being late all the time!