英語書籍：Promises I Made My Mother (節選四）ZT
英語書籍：Promises I Made My Mother (節選三）ZT
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英語書籍：Promises I Made My Mother (節選二）ZT
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====Promises I Made My Mother 簡介==================
PROMISES I MADE MY MOTHER
by Sam Haskell
with David Rensin
FROM THE BOOK JACKET:
What would my mother say?
How would she want me to handle this situation?
How can I make this tough decision and stay true to
myself?
Sam Haskell still asks himself these questions every day.
When Haskell was young, his devoted mother, Mary,
instilled in her son the values of character, faith, and
honor by setting an example and asking him to promise to
live his life according to her lessons. He did, and those
promises have served Haskell consistently from his
Mississippi boyhood to his long career at the venerable
William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills.
In this inspiring memoir full of touching stories and
amusing anecdotes, Haskell reveals how he kept his pledge
to his mother to live a decent life--even in the shark-
infested waters of Hollywood, where he handled the hottest
stars and packaged the highest-rated shows--by refusing to
become the cliche of an amoral agent. Here is Haskell as a
child in Amory, Mississippi (pop. 7,000), discovering the
power of hope as he waits for an unlikely visit from the
"Cheer Man" (a representative of the detergent company who
gave ten dollars to anyone using the brand), learning
humility after pursuing an eighth-grade "Good Citizenship"
award he cockily assumed he'd win, and confronting the
complications of human character when a near-fatal car
crash exposed his judgmental father's true nature.
Years later, in Hollywood, Haskell would rely on his
mother's teachings--honesty, self-reliance, and faith
--as he rose from the William Morris mailroom to
eventually become the company's Worldwide Head of
Television. His capacity for friendship and his insistence
on living his version of the Golden Rule (being "thought-
fully political") allowed him to handle various client
crises and the tense negotiations that nearly scuttled the
last years of "Everybody Loves Raymond" and the entire
existence of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air."
Haskell has achieved success through self-respect, and
from his story we learn how we, too, can maintain our
dignity when faced with life's challenges. This stirring
memoir is a testament to mothers everywhere who instill in
their sons the lasting values they need to become good men
and devoted fathers.
======================================
PROMISES I MADE MY MOTHER
by Sam Haskell
with David Rensin (nonfiction)
Published by Ballantine Books,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780345506559
Copyright (c) 2009 by Sam Haskell
PROMISES (Part 3 of 5)
======================================
Time marched on. The commercial cycled off the air. I moved the sign
from my bedroom wall to underneath the bed, and then I rolled it up
at the bottom of my closet. But I still believed that somehow,
someway, the Cheer Man would come to Amory--and more important, to
my house.
The next summer, when I was ten, Jamie was having his ninth birthday
party on Labor Day weekend. On any of our birthdays, there were
always kids throwing a ball in the yard or playing a game in the
quiet street. We had the run of the neighborhood, and as soon as we
got home from school, we'd all be outside, doing things all over the
place. Back then parents never had to worry about where their
children were; today's dangers didn't seem to lurk around every
corner.
At Jamie's party, we were playing football on the front lawn when
suddenly we heard, from down the street, what sounded like a
megaphone. Soon, we could make out the words: "CHEER! CHEER!
CHEER...IS HERE!" Everyone stopped playing and stared. Then, in the
distance, we saw a funny-looking car with a loudspeaker on the roof,
driving slowly down Third Street like the Pied Piper of Hamlin on
wheels, followed by all the kids in the neighborhood.
Oh my God, I thought. He's here! It's the Cheer Man! And it was
true. The car was a few blocks away, but I was absolutely certain it
wouldn't stop until it got in front of my house. I didn't waste a
second. I ran inside to get my sign. All the other kids, who knew
the story, followed me. Everyone grabbed for my mother's Cheer box,
and powder flew all over the place. A couple of kids wrote "Cheer"
on scraps of notebook paper: their reasonable facsimiles.
I grabbed my sign from the closet and rushed out on my front porch
to see the Cheer Man pull up and stop directly in front of my house.
I thought, He's really here!
As the Cheer Man got out of his car, I proudly held my sign high
over my head. My heart was beating so hard I thought my chest would
burst. Among a yardful of kids screaming for his attention, he
spotted the giant, colored Cheer sign that I had worked so hard to
make, walked over, and, with a big grin, said, "'You' get the ten
dollars."
My parents were amazed--but in profoundly different ways. My father
stood there agog, not quite believing his eyes, but happy for me,
and my mother had a huge loving smile on her face. Until then,
Sammy's Cheer sign had been a joke, and I was just this precocious
bookworm of a kid who believed in the oddest things--like, for
instance, that anything can happen if you just believe hard enough.
When the Cheer Man handed me the check for ten dollars, my father
said, "How is this possible? How is it that you would come to this
tiny town in this obscure part of Mississippi?"
The Cheer Man said, "Well, it's really very interesting. We have
this thing called a 'computer.'" None of us knew anything about
computers, except for the room-sized behemoths with flashing lights
that made whirring and beeping noises in science fiction movies.
He went on, "The names of every registered voter, in every county,
in every state in these United States were put into that computer.
The computer picked two random addresses in every county in every
state. 405 South Third Street in Amory was one of the two chosen in
Monroe County, Mississippi, and it's just taken us this long to get
down here."
Then he got back into his car and drove off.
I immediately rushed to the Security Bank of Amory, cashed the
check--which was made out to "Resident of 405 South Third Street,
Amory, Mississippi"--and bought three model airplanes, glue, and
paint. I spent all of Labor Day weekend building those planes. Then
I hung them from my ceiling and put them on the shelves in my room.
Of course, today I wish my parents had just given me the ten dollars
in cash and let me frame that check for posterity.
* * *
When the Cheer Man came to my hometown, just like the commercial had
promised, I learned a very valuable lesson about the power of
believing in a dream no matter how impossible it seems. "Anything"
is possible. Everything my mother taught me, and everything that I
promised to always strive for, is built on the idea that you should
never give up on your dreams. And if your dreams come true, it just
confirms and strengthens your faith for the next one.
I'm not saying that faith alone can make a dream come true. Faith
isn't a magical power and there are no guarantees in life. But think
of it this way: If you had to choose between feeling positive or
negative, which is the more attractive choice? I'd rather feel good
and work for the best result in something than be cynical and, if my
dream still happened to come true, shrug my shoulders and think I
got lucky just that one time. And if my dream didn't come true,
rather than give up, I'd want to find the strength to move on to the
next dream.
I guess what I'm saying is that faith--call it a souped-up version
of the power of positive thinking--"is its own reward." Believing
that anything can happen is a forward-thinking mental state. It
feels good. Then, as with a stone tossed into a pond, the ripple
effect of your attitude not only radiates into the world, but it
attracts like-minded people who might help you achieve your dreams,
as well as those who want to feel as good as you do.
You are what you do. When a situation can go either way, having
faith might just be that little bit of extra focus and energy and
action it takes to make your dream come true.
* * *
My mother demonstrated this faith every day in ways both large and
small. When I was a boy, whenever we'd see a penny on the street,
she'd say: "See a penny, pick it up, and all the day you'll have
good luck." It may seem corny, but it is a perfect example of my
mother's insistence on finding good everywhere.
Since then, if I see a penny, I pick it up, and if I'm in the midst
of a worrying situation, I say, "This is for that worry," and I
believe that helps the worry go away. I pick up pennies everywhere.
I will not pass one by. (Well, I did once, when I saw it in a
urinal. I just couldn't do it.) I have been in a full tuxedo in a
rainstorm and have bent down to snatch one out of a gutter as water
rushed over it. The penny is symbolic. It reminds me to never forget
my mother or that my journey started in Amory, Mississippi, where I
was raised, and that it's always better to believe in a wonderful
moment of luck than ignore it.
I believed in the Cheer Man, and he came. I was lucky because I got
to experience firsthand the connection between faith and a positive
outcome when I was still young enough for the moment to take deep
root in me. It was as if someone had flipped on an inner light, and
that light never went off. Today, I can't imagine feeling any other
way.
Had the Cheer Man never come, though, I would simply have moved on
to another dream. My mother would have made sure of that. As she
often said, "When God closes a door he always opens a window."
Fortunately, as my life went on, I was blessed with the success that
came with so many of my dreams: I got to be who I wanted to be and
not who others expected me to be, which meant moving to Los Angeles
and working in show business, among other things. I married the
woman I wanted to; I had two wonderful children to whom I can pass
on lessons about the power of faith. Those were the big dreams. I
also dreamed of winning the Good Citizenship Award in the eighth
grade, of being Amory's youngest Eagle Scout, and of making the
varsity football team in high school.
I'll say it again: It always pays to believe that good things "can"
happen. Because the Cheer Man came to my house, I have to believe
there's always hope.
Today, I still have the determined optimism of a ten-year-old boy
whose mother never said a word to dash or damage his dreams, and
whose faith in me has become my faith in myself. Both allow me to
walk just a little bit taller in life.
In fact, the Cheer Man has come for me many times since. He still
comes.
He can come for you, too, if you just believe.
====作者 Sam Haskell 簡介==================
Sam Haskell moved from Mississippi to Los Angeles in 1978 to work at
the William Morris Agency. He became an agent in 1980, senior vice
president by 1990, executive vice president by 1995, and Worldwide
Head of Television by 1999. After a twenty-six-year career, he
retired in 2004 to pursue philanthropic endeavors. In 2007 he was
named one of the 25 Most Innovative and Influential People in
Television over the last quarter century by "TV Week." He lives in
Los Angeles with his wife, Mary Donnelly Haskell (his college
sweetheart and a former Miss Mississippi), and their two children,
Sam IV and Mary Lane.
David Rensin has written or co-written thirteen books, five of them
"New York Times" bestsellers. His most recent titles are "All for a
Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer
Miki Dora" and "The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up."
英語書籍：Promises I Made My Mother (節選一）
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