Unit 2: Vocabulary from Readings 1

As I lunged ahead toward my seat, passengers looked up at me with the stricken expression of creatures who know they are about to die.

I loved her southern drawl, her indiscriminate use of perfume, her soulful squeezes.

I loved her southern drawl, her indiscriminate use of perfume, her soulful squeezes.

Among the many feelings going through my head during those excruciating 20 minutes was pride—pride in how well everybody was behaving.

The young businessman lamented that he had not had a chance to buy his two girls a present.

The portly, bald, well-dressed man who met me and my sisters seemed a foreign, authoritarian figure.

I found myself surrounded by richer, smarter and better-dressed classmates, who looked askance at my strange clothes and heavy accent.

She led me through the door marked “Newspaper Club” and into the presence of Miss Hurd, the newspaper advisor and English teacher who would become my mentor and my muse.

A formidable, solidly built woman with salt-and-pepper hair, a steely eye and a flat Boston accent, Miss Hurd had no patience with layabouts.

I handed in the essay, hoping never to see it again, but Miss Hurd had it published in the school paper. This mortified me at first, until I saw that my classmates reacted with sympathy and tact to my family’s story.