Read the following passage carefully before you attempt any...

AgentJellyfishMaster2305
Read the following passage carefully before you attempt any…

Read the following passage carefully before you attempt any questions. Be sure to complete each question before submitting it for grading.

COMING OF AGE

Coming of age is the change from child to adult, boy to man, girl to woman. But exactly when that transition into maturity happens – and how you celebrate the change – may depend entirely on where in the world you live. These coming-of-age celebrations, also known as rituals, rites, or cultural ceremonies, take many forms among different religions, tribes, and countries.

In the United Kingdom, which comprises a small number of countries, young people come of (5)

age when they reach 16, 18, or 21 years old. At 16 you can get married with parental consent in England and Wales, but you have to wait until you are 18 before you are allowed to vote or buy alcohol or cigarettes. In the USA you cannot purchase alcohol until you are 21, but you can vote at 18. In The Bahamas, young people come of age when they reach 16, 18, or 21. At 16 you can consummate a romantic relationship without legal penalty. However, you cannot marry at 16 unless (10) you have parental consent, and buy or drink alcohol or vote until you are 18.

In the days of old, many countries had numerous coming-of-age celebrations. In modern society there are only a few rituals left, such as Confirmation, Bar Mitzvah, prom, graduation, sorority-sponsored Debutante Balls, and Gentlemen’s Club banquets, that mark the passage between youth and adulthood. However, in some countries, there are still ways in which parents seek to create (15) personalized coming-of-age rituals for their children. Marcia Cooper was one such person. As her son neared his thirteenth birthday, she noticed he wanted more freedom. But was he mature enough to handle it? To find out, she set him a number of challenges, which she later wrote about in her blog. Read her blog entry below.

SAMMY’S MODERN COMING OF AGE RITUAL

It all started with a set of DVDs of the television series, Roots, that my husband Danny and I (20) had picked up at a Red Cross Fair book sale. I watched the first episode with my son, Sammy, and he seemed quite captivated with the part where the young Kunta Kinte goes off into the forest with a dozen other adolescent boys for “manhood training” – specific tests of strength, bravery, the endurance of pain, and hunting skills.

I thought, why not set him a 21st-century, western (pain free) equivalent? Sammy was just a (25) few weeks away from his thirteenth birthday, which seemed like an important turning point. He was eager for more freedom and independence, arguing not to have a babysitter, to cycle beyond the boundaries of our neighbourhood and to attend soccer matches without Danny. But did he have the maturity and ‘street smarts’ to be granted these things? Let’s put him to the test, I thought. Now seemed the perfect time to make sure he had the skills needed for a more grown-up life. (30)

However, to get him fully involved, I knew I would have to invent a rite of passage that would appeal to a modern thirteen-year-old who already had his boxer shorts permanently exposed. After all, this was a boy who hated anything that required effort for lengthy periods and avoided any kind of system or daily routine: he spent no more than three minutes on any homework assignment, washed pots so quickly that the before-and-after- effect was insignificant and had still never read a book on (35) his own. Danny had even resorted to putting a picture of a mouthful of rotting teeth above the basin in the bathroom to persuade him to use his toothbrush. On the 0plus side, Sammy was articulate, inquisitive about the world far beyond his own small universe and physically adventurous. I wanted to set challenges that played to these strengths and others, but also targeted his weaknesses.

To engage and motivate him, I decided to put a sort of life-as-a-game twist on the whole thing. (40)There would be thirteen challenges covering thirteen different areas of life, and several challenges would arbitrarily contain number thirteen in some way, if possible. I even bought envelopes, each of a different bright colour, in which to present the tasks to him, one by one.

Challenge one: Get on a jitney headed downtown to Bay Street on your own. Go to a fancy sit-down restaurant. Order the thirteenth item on the menu. Then at three o’clock buy yourself an item of (45) clothing with $13 from the souvenir shop on the corner of East and Bay Street.

Sammy was instantly upbeat about this one. Of course, I was not randomly releasing him into the wild. I had secretly micromanaged the whole thing. We were going to put him on a jitney at a particular stop opposite a hotel out West. After about forty-five minutes maximum, he would end up on Bay Street. Sammy was familiar with Bay Street because his father chauffeurs him down it (50) frequently to and from school. However, he had only walked along it when very young, when he had always been accompanied by Danny or me. We put him on the jitney. I was feeling quite uneasy, but as the jitney pulled away, I smiled and thought of Kunta Kinte’s mother’s words when her son is taken from the village: “A boy has just left; a man will return.” Sammy did not know it, but his father and I were driving to Bay Street to collect him. When we eventually met up, he told us that he had loved the (55) solo jitney journey and the shopping, but had been very uncomfortable with the lunch element at first.

“It was a bit weird, Mum. A kid on his won sitting in a restaurant.”

I was less impressed with the item of clothing he had bought. It was a white T-shirt with the words: “Number One Kisser. Ask my girlfriend” on it. Number One Kisser?

Challenge one was a success but the second test made him groan: thirteen household tasks, (60) from ironing to paying a bill to defrosting the freezer. “Muddoes, that’ll take me all day,” he said, looking at the list.

Nevertheless, he started off enthusiastically with the first job of mowing the lawn, claiming he was going to make soccer-pitch stripes on it. Danny readily relinquished his lawn mower. Minutes later, Sammy ran into the house to say he had remembered that he needed to bring in the throw rugs. (65) “I’d better do it now ’cause it looks like it might rain later.” Brilliant. He was already thinking like a young man with housekeeping responsibilities.

By the last task – putting up two shelves – Sammy was visibly fading, as droopy as an old rag, yet her persevered. He certainly proved that he had a good command of a range of swear words.

I was determined to really hit his weak points with challenge three: learn, practice, and perform (70) in public a blues piece on the trumpet. Sammy had had a year of trumpet lessons, but had given up. His father had tried to teach him a bit, too, but that did not end well. However, when presented with the challenge, Sammy embraced the opportunity to Internet-surf, writing down the notes from a YouTube video and attempting the piece on his own.

The idea of regular, repetitive practice, however, went against every bone in his body. Danny (75) had told him it was going to be much scarier than when he was Joseph in the nativity play or banged the triangle in the school orchestra, and it was indeed a struggle. Frustrated, he even lied some days and told us that he had practiced, torturing the babysitter, while we were out.

It was only when we arrived at the event, an open-mic night for young people at Fort Charlotte, with a proper stage and an audience of two hundred persons, that his nerves kicked in. He babbled and (80) fidgeted. However, he performed well and received huge applause and cheers. He and Danny chest-bumped and “dapped” each other, and Sammy was exhilarated all the way home.

Three challenges down, ten to go. I knew he was enjoying it when I overheard him on his cell telling a friend animatedly about what was inside the next coloured envelope, which I had left on the kitchen. (85)

The next challenge got him cooking (plan, buy ingredients and make from scratch a three-course family dinner, choosing dishes from any page thirteen of our recipe books); learning French (Sammy had been invited to France in the summer holidays with his best friend’s family); painting a portrait to capture himself at thirteen (he’s a talented artist, if I may say so myself); and walking (plan and do a thirteen-mile walk on your own). I knew the distance would not be that strenuous for him. (90) What I really wanted was for him to experience how liberating and thought-stimulating it can be to walk for an extended period of time with nothing but your own thoughts. (I told him he couldn’t take his iPod.) “Ho-hum,” he said to the walking. But the idea of meditating while walking intrigued him.

Challenge eight was to volunteer. I had an idealistic vision of him serving soup in a centre for the homeless or spending time with the residents at a home for the elderly. In reality, health and safety (95) made this impossible. He ended up running the kiddies’ hoopla stall at a church fair. Children love him (“They were so funny, Mum!” he said of his kiddie-customers), and he was enthusiastic about how easily he had made money. “All I had was a table, some hoops and ten items from The Dollar Shop.” Perhaps that in itself was a seed worth sowing.

With five challenges left, Sammy was asking what his reward was going to be at the end of all (100) this. When Kunta Kinte’s initiation ceremony is over, his father puts a tribal leather pouch around his neck as a token of his new status. They look into each other’s eyes for a brief moment, full of pride and emotion. Similarly, I had hoped the sense of achievement Sammy experienced at completing the challenges would be enough. Silly me. This is a child of a generation used to being ridiculously rewarded simply for existing. Children are given certificates for completing spot-the-Easter egg (105) treasure hunts and attending school, and soccer trophies just for being on the team. “What I’d rather really like, “Sammy told me, “is if you and Dad took me to London again, this time to see the Arsenal soccer team in action.” Should we? I’m not sure.

By now we have been doing the challenges for two months and Sammy is tiring a little, although he’s looking forward to the next challenge – organizing a social event for thirteen friends.(110) But there have been pay-offs already. He plays the trumpet a lot these days, cuts the grass and we know we can ask him to make dinner if we are too busy. Now when he wants to visit a friend who lives out west, instead of driving him there and handing him over with clothes and a cuddly toy (I’m joking about the second item, of course), we sometimes put him on a direct jitney or allow him to take(115) a taxi.

I also think Sammy has learned that effort leads to reward, that he can do whatever he puts his mind to, that it is worth feeling the fear and doing it anyway, that we trust him to do things he thought we might not, that being in your own company is just fine – and that life is full of possibility and playfulness if you want it to be.

However, I may live to regret the whole coming of age exercise.

“When I’m eighteen,” Sammy said the other day, “do you think you could send me on some (120) sort of treasure hunt around Europe?”

Instructions: Use context clues to determine the meaning of each word in bold print as they are used in the passage. Write the meaning, then write the clues that helped you determine the meaning of each word. Also, tell what kind of context clue was used (you may use your notes on context clues to help you).

a. Eager.__________________________________________________________

Clues:__________________________________________________________