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After my brother died in an accident, my mother was in deep sadness. I was only a four-year-old girl
at the time, but I still understood the sudden shift in my mom's attitude towards safety. Suddenly everything around us was potentially dangerous. Overnight, the world had gone from a playground to a dangerous
zone. I grew up with a lot of limits and rules. I couldn't walk home from school by myself, even though
everyone I knew already did. I couldn't go to summer camp because what if something happened to me?
As I got older, the list of things of fear got longer. My whole life was divided into "things you should
avoid", and "things you needed to do in order to have a good, long life." I became a natural worrier. I
worry about things like getting cancer, losing my wallet, car accidents, earthquakes, and losing my
job-disasters big and small, real and imagined.
The funny part is that you'd never know it by looking at my life. In fact, I've developed a rule for
myself: If it scares me, then I have to do it at least once. I've done lots of things that my mom would have worried about: I've ridden a motorcycle; I've traveled -a lot. I've performed stand-up comedy, and I'm
planning my second wedding.
There's something else I don't usually talk about, but it's a cornerstone in my belief: When I was 14,
my mother died suddenly in a car accident. At my mom's funeral I remember making a choice. I could
either live out the rest of my life trying to be "safe" or I could be brave enough to live out a fulfilling,
exciting and, yes, sometimes dangerous life.
I worry that I may have betrayed (背叛) my mother by writing her in this light, but she has been a
driving force in my life and, in the end I think she would have been proud of me. Courage isn't a natural
character of human beings. I believe that using courage is like developing a muscle. The more often I do
things that scare me or that make me uncomfortable, the more I realize that I can do a lot more than I
originally thought I could do.
Even though I inherited (继承) my mother's cautious nature. I've also come to believe that fear can be
a good thing, if we face it. Believing that has made my world a less scary place.
1. In the writer's childhood, the limits and rules were used to ______.
A. improve her behavior
B. develop her independence
C. be in memory of her dead brother
D. protect her from possible danger
2. How does the writer deal with the things that frighten her?
A. She just ignores them.
B. She faces up to them.
C. She turns to her mother for help.
D. She does them with her friends.
3. From the passage, we can learn that ______.
A. the writer failed in her first marriage
B. nothing can make the writer afraid now
C. frightening things made the writer lose her self-confidence
D. the writer's mother felt annoyed with her
4. What does the passage mainly talk about?
A. Mothers influence their children much.
B. Fear is in fact not a bad thing.
C. Facing fear bravely produces courage.
D. The world is not as scary as people expect.

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