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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.
事实上，好几个小时以后那种气恼和失望的感觉才离我而去，又过了好多天以后我才能在谈起这场遭遇时不再希望自己的块头够大，不怕那家伙把我扔下公共汽车。再过了几个星期后，我才想到，可能我跟那个人的行为一样不好。
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别严格的家教，但在我们家有些行为准则是从来不容置辩的。我们都认为，人总是要关心别人的感觉，随时准备安慰人，鄙视那些无礼地冒犯他人的人。我妈的劝诫是(对4岁孩子而言并不像陈词滥调）：“总是要设身处地为他人着想。”
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.
回想起来，我明白，这跟其他任何事情一样，是个政治问题。我父母，身为移民的子女，在相对贫困的环境中长大，有着一种强烈的信念，认为世界上的人分为两种：关心别人的人和不关心别人的人；宽宏大量的和心胸狭窄的；我们和他们。因此，当我60多岁的母亲从卧室的窗户瞥见一个当地卖报纸的小贩因为执照的问题而被警察推搡着离开时，尽管身体不太舒服，她还是冲下床去帮他，然后又把接下来的两天时间花在替他给市政机构打电话的事上。
