Until late in the 20th century, most Americans spent time with people of generations. Now mid-aged Americans may not keep in touch with old people until they are old themselves.That’s because we group people by age. We put our three-year-olds together in day-care center, our 13-year-olds in school and sports activities, and our 80-year-olds in senior-citizen homes. Why?

We live away from the old for many reasons: young people sometimes avoid the old to get rid of fears for aging and dying. It is much harder to watch .someone we love disappear before our eyes. Sometimes it’s so hard that we stay away from the people who need us most.

Fortunately, .some of us have found our way to the old. And we have discovered that they often save the young.

A reporter moved her family onto a block filled with old people. At first her children were disappointed. But the reporter baked banana bread for the neighbours and had her children deliver it and visit. Soon the children had many new friends, with whom they shared food, stories and projects. “My children have never been less lonely,” the reporter said.

The young, in turn, save the old. Once I was in a rest home when a visitor showed up with a baby. She was immediately surrounded. People who hadn’t gotten out of bed in a week suddenly were ringing for a wheelchair. Even those who had seemed asleep wake up to watch the child. Babies have an astonishing power to comfort and cure.

Grandparents are a special case. They give grandchildren a feeling of security and continuity. As my husband put it, “my grandparents gave me a deep sense that things would turn out right in the end.”

Grandchildren speak of attention they don’t get from worried parents. “My parents were always telling me to hurry up, and my grandparents told me to slow down,” one friend said. A teacher told me she can tell which pupils have relationships with grandparents: they are quieter, calmer, more trusting.

小题1:Now in an American family, people can find that ____.

A．children never live with their parents

B．not all working people live with their parents

C．aged people are supported by their grandchildren

D．grandchildren are supported by their grandparents小题2:The reason why old people are left alone may be that ____.

A．the old don’t like to live in a big family

B．the young can’t get enough money to support the old

C．different generations have different lifestyles

D．the old are too weak to live with the young小题3:The fact that the reporter told us shows that ___.

A．old people in America lead a hard life

B．old people in America enjoy banana bread

C．she had no time to take care of her children

D．old people are easy to get along with小题4:Seeing a baby, the old people get excited because ____.

A．they had never seen a baby before

B．the baby was clever and beautiful

C．the baby brought them the image of life

D．the baby’s mother would take care of them小题5:Why do children not get attention from their parents?

A．Because they often make trouble and make their parents disappointed.

B．Because their parents are too busy to take care of them.

C．Because their parents have to take care of their grandparents.

D．Because their parents have been out of work for a long time.

When imaginative men turn their eyes towards space and wonder whether life exists in any part of it, they may cheer themselves by remembering that life need not resemble closely the life that exists on Earth. Mars looks like the only planet where life like ours could exist, and even this is doubtful. But there may be other kinds of life based on other kinds of chemistry, and they may multiply on Venus or Jupiter. At least we cannot prove at present that they do not.

Even more interesting is the possibility that life on their planets may be in a more advanced stage of evolution. Present-day man is in a peculiar and probably temporary stage. His individual units retain a p sense of personality. They are, in fact, still capable under favorable circumstances of leading individual lives. But man s societies are already sufficiently developed to have enormously more power and effectiveness than the individuals have.

It is not likely that this transitional situation will continue very long on the evolutionary time scale. Fifty thousand years from now man s societies may have become so close-knit that the individuals retain no sense of separate personality. Then little distinction will remain between the organic parts of the multiple organism and the inorganic parts (machines) that have been constructed by it. A million years further on man and his machines may have merged as closely as the muscles of the human body and the nerve cells that set them in motion.

The explorers of space should be prepared for some such situation. If they arrive on a foreign planet that has reached an advanced stage (and this is by no means impossible), they may find it being inhabited by a single large organism composed of many closely cooperating units.

The units may be "secondary"—machines created millions of years ago by a previous form of life and given the will and ability to survive and reproduce. They may be built entirely of metals and other durable (耐用的) materials. If this is the case, they may be much more tolerant of their environment, multiplying under conditions that would destroy immediately any organism made of carbon compounds and dependent on the familiar carbon cycle.

Such creatures might be relics of a past age, many millions of years ago, when their planet was favorable to the origin of life, or they might be immigrants from a favored planet.

Humans on Earth today are characterized by （）。

A. their existence as free and separate beings

B. their capability of living under favorable conditions

C. their great power and effectiveness

D. their p desire for living in a close-knit society