「故事·听力」I Got Stuck 200 Ft High From Ground
I Got Stuck 200 Ft High From Ground
This girl's called Susan, and she wants to share an intimate story with you. Have you ever been afraid of something? Like, the kind of fear that resembles a bone-chilling cold and that makes your blood stop running through your veins. The sort of thing that means you can’t even make yourself move; you end up frozen like a statue. Well, for Susan, this is a perfect description of her fear of heights.
Susan noticed that she didn’t feel right being anywhere higher than a regular chair when she was still a child. She didn’t even like to swing on the swings – she preferred to just sit on them, and could barely go down a slide. But by far the scariest thing happened to her when she was about nine years old. Her cat had run away and was hiding in the neighbors’ tree house. There were no grown-ups around at the time, so she decided to rescue the cat on her own. Which meant she had to climb up into the tree house. “Don’t look down” was the only thought she had the whole time. Once she finally reached her goal and already had the cat in her hands, she accidentally took a look at the ground. Fear seized her heart. The only thing she could do was lie down on the floor of the tree house and wait until somebody came along to help her. Mr. Johnson, their neighbor, found her about an hour later. He’d gone out to walk his dog, which apparently sniffed out her cat who was still next to her. Since then, she’s never been that courageous again or tried to rescue anything.
Susan’s always been too embarrassed to admit that she’s something of a coward, especially in school. She was afraid that no one would be friends with her or, worse, that everyone would mock her. Somehow she managed to pretend to be normal. For example, when her friends invited her to the amusement park on more than one occasion, she came up with different excuses not to go, like that she wasn’t feeling well or had too much homework to do, or was visitingher grandma and so on. And in order not have to climb up the rope in PE class, she used to put a fake bandage on her arm or leg, saying that she had a sprain.
But one day, her life totally changed. It was Susan’s birthday, and she was in for a complete surprise. First thing in the morning, her best friends sent her a text saying that they were going to “kidnap” her – the birthday girl – for the whole day. They actually blindfolded her when they drove away from her house, so she had no idea where they were going. When she was finally allowed to remove the blindfold, she was seized by an almost paralyzing fear. They wereat that amusement park which she'd tried so badly to avoid for so long. Disastrously, her friends mistook her speechlessness for happiness. They explained that it was unforgivable that she had never been to the amusement park because of her constant illnesses, and they were going to make it up to her. They couldn’t even imagine how badly wrong they were.
Susan tried with all her might to avoid the carousels. She said that, at first, she just wanted to go to the room of fear (a place with crooked mirrors) and then get something to eat and so on. But in the end, they still dragged her on to the rides. After she survived the swings, they forced her to go on the Ferris wheel. She tried her best not to show that she was scared to death. She pretended to have fun as long as she could, until their car suddenly stopped almost at the top of the ride. Even her friends now seemed frightened. They announced over the loudspeaker that they would soon fix everything, but she was absolutely petrified with fear. She felt like she was blacking out, and it seemed like there wasn’t enough air to breathe. It was about time that she admitted everything. Right there, on the ride, she closed her eyes and rapidly told them about her fear of heights. Her friends actually did their best to soothe and calm her down. One of them held her hand to make her feel safe, and they all began telling different stories so that she would be distracted. There was something about a dog bite or a hot dog – she can’t remember now. But it really helped. Herfear was still with her, but she could at least breathe, and even opened her eyes. After about 40 minutes they were on solid ground again, but those were the longest 40 minutes of her life, ever.
Susan's friends told her she was the bravest person on that Ferris wheel. They then sat themselves down on a bench and got some ice cream. Now that everything was over, they were finally able to laugh at the situation.