新编大学英语第一册unit2 Text D Comforting Thoughts.docVIP

Comforting Thoughts 1 First I read about a study in Meriden, 2 I didnt feel perfect. One thing that was bothering me was that the ten most popular methods of comforting yourself listed in the Meriden study didnt mention sniffing desserts, even though Yale, where all the sniffing research was going on, is only about twenty miles down the road. Does this mean that some of these scientists are so busy talking to themselves that they dont talk to each other? It got me so upset that I went to the back door of a baker in our neighborhood to sniff the aroma of chocolate chip cookies. I was talking to myself the whole time, of course. 3 What the Yale people think, I said to myself, is that a person is soothed by the smell of, say, chocolate chip cookies because it brings back pleasant memories, like the memory of his mother baking chocolate chip cookies. 4 What if his mother always burned the chocolate chip cookies? I replied. 5 Are you talking about my mother? 6 Whose mother do you think Im talking about? I said. Were the only ones here. 7 Were those cookies burnt? 8 What do you think all that black stuff was? 9 I thought that was the chocolate chips. 10 No, she always forgot the chocolate chips. 11 I wasnt finding the conversation very comforting at all. I dont like to hear anyone make light of my mothers chocolate chip cookies, even me. I must have raised my voice, because the next thing I knew, the baker had come out to see what was going on. 12 Even though the Meriden study had shown that being with someone else was the most comforting thing of all it finished ahead of listening to music and even watching TV I saw right away that being with the baker wasnt going to be much more comforting than talking to myself. He said, Are you crazy? 13 I told him that I was engaging in two therapies that had been scientifically proven effective: sniffing chocolate chip cookies and talking to myself. He told me that I owed him two dollars and fifty cents. For sniffing, we charge a b