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And, indeed, it was hours before that sense of irritation and dismay left me, days before I was able to talk about the encounter without wishing I were massive enough to have dared the guy to throw me off his bus. And it was weeks before it occurred to me that maybe I'd acted almost as badly as he had.
事實上，好幾個小時以后那種氣惱和失望的感覺才離我而去，又過了好多天以后我才能在談起這場遭遇時不再希望自己的塊頭夠大，不怕那家伙把我扔下公共汽車。再過了幾個星期后，我才想到，可能我跟那個人的行為一樣不好。
Mine was not a particularly strict upbringing, but in our house certain rules of behaviour were never in question. It was assumed that one was always solicitous of people's feelings and ready to offer comfort, and contemptuous of those who disrespectfully slighted others. "Always," went my mother's admonition (which to a four-year-old did not sound like a cliché, "put yourself in the other person's shoes."
我所接受的并不是特別嚴格的家教，但在我們家有些行為準則是從來不容置辯的。我們都認為，人總是要關心別人的感覺，隨時準備安慰人，鄙視那些無禮地冒犯他人的人。我媽的勸誡是(對4歲孩子而言并不像陳詞濫調）：“總是要設身處地為他人著想。”
In retrospect, I see that this was, as much as anything else, a matter of politics. My parents, children of immigrants, raised in relative poverty, were of the fervent conviction that the world was divided between people who cared about others and people who did not, between the generous-spirited and the petty, between us and them. Thus, it was that in her sixties my mother spotted from her bedroom window a local newspaper vendor being hustled away by the police for having an improper license. Though quite ill, she dashed out of bed to help him, then spent the next two days phoning city agencies on his behalf.
回想起來，我明白，這跟其他任何事情一樣，是個政治問題。我父母，身為移民的子女，在相對貧困的環境中長大，有著一種強烈的信念，認為世界上的人分為兩種：關心別人的人和不關心別人的人；寬宏大量的和心胸狹窄的；我們和他們。因此，當我60多歲的母親從臥室的窗戶瞥見一個當地賣報紙的小販因為執照的問題而被警察推搡著離開時，盡管身體不太舒服，她還是沖下床去幫他，然后又把接下來的兩天時間花在替他給市政機構打電話的事上。
