^^
30.
A boy entered a coffee shop where I worked as a waitress. He sat at a table and asked me how much an ice cream sundae was. “Fifty cents,” I replied. The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it. “How much is a dish of plain ice cream?” he inquired. Some people were now waiting for a table, and I was impatient. “Thirty-five cents,” I said angrily. The little boy again counted the coins and he ordered the plain ice cream. I brought the ice cream and walked away. The boy finished, paid the cashier, and departed. When I came back, I swallowed hard at what I saw. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were fifteen pennies—my tip.
31.
One key social competence is how well or poorly people express their own feelings. Paul Ekman uses the term ‘display rules’ for the social agreement about which feelings can be properly shown when. Cultures sometimes vary tremendously in this regard. For example, Ekman and his colleagues in an Asian country studied the facial reactions of students to a horrific film about a teenage Aboriginal ritual ceremony. When the students watched the film with an authority figure present, their faces showed only the slightest hints of reaction. However, when they thought they were alone (though they were being taped by a secret camera) their faces twisted into vivid mixes of uncomfortable feelings.
32.
We have to ask ourselves a question. What kind of world will our children have to live in? Will they have air to breathe and food to eat? These are among the basic questions that were addressed at the first world meeting on the environment, attended by more than 100 world leaders and 30,000 other scientists, newspeople, and citizens concerned. These complex problems can no longer be solved by individual countries. Nations of the world must act together if we are to develop answers that will give a safe and healthy world to our children. World leaders should have the vision to protect our environment.
