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Pre-Intermediate
Forrest Gump
Home reading
Task 1 Check the meaning of the words in bold and read the chapter.
Chapter 2 Life at University
When we got to the university, Coach Bryant came to talk to us.
‘Last man to get to the practice field will get a ride there on my shoe!’ he shouted at us.
And he meant it when he said that kind of thing. We soon learned that.
The building that I went to live in was nice on the outside but not on the inside. Most of the doors and windows were broken, and the floor was dirty. I lived in a room with a man called Curtis. He crashed into the room with a wild look in his eyes. He wasn’t very tall, but he was very strong. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.
‘Mobile,’ I told him.
‘That’s a stupid town!’ he said.
And that was all of our conversation for several days. On the practice field, things didn’t start very well. I got the ball, but I ran the wrong way with it, and everybody got angry and started shouting at me. But Coach Bryant called me across. ‘Just get in the line and start catching the ball,’ he told me. And then I told him something that he didn’t want to hear.
‘They never taught me to catch a ball at high school,’ I said. ‘It was difficult enough for me just to remember where our goal line was.’
I don’t think he was very pleased. But he started to teach me to catch.
I wanted my Mom, and I wanted to go home. I didn’t like that place.
And Curtis was always angry, and I couldn’t understand him. He had a car, and sometimes he gave me a ride to the practice field. But one day when he had to change a wheel on the car, I helped him.
‘If you’re an idiot,’ he said, angrily, ‘how do you know how to do that?’
‘Maybe I am an idiot,’ I said, ‘but I’m not stupid.’
Then Curtis ran after me, and called me all kinds of terrible names.
After that, I moved my bed to another room.
The first football game was on Saturday. I ran well, and we won 35 to 3. Everybody was pleased with me. I phoned Mom to tell her.
‘I heard the game on the radio!’ she said. ‘I was so happy, I wanted to cry!’
That night, everybody went to parties, but nobody asked me to go. I went back to my room, but I heard music from somewhere upstairs. I found a young man who was sitting in his room playing the harmonica.