“你是在做補習廣告嗎？”有人問我。
“你在自吹自擂吧？”有人指責我。
俗話說，“牛不是吹出來的。”一個老師的好壞，不是靠他自己吹，而是看學生的成就。
說到吹，讓我想起我上課的一個小插曲。作文的范圍是第一次學習樂器的經驗。我的學生是學銀笛的。我就啟發他在寫吹銀笛的過程中，可以利用“吹”（blow）這個單詞的雙關意義來做文章。比如，英語熟語里有“blow out of proportion”，還可以聯想到inflated（充氣）, deflated（癟氣）, fully-blown（膨脹）等與吹氣相關的單詞與詞組。
結果，學生寫出來的作文那可不是吹的------倍兒棒！
My First Blow-out Experience
I had not fully grasped the true meaning of the phrase “Blow out of proportion” until the very first day when I took up my flute playing class.
Flute playing looks so easy, so effortless and so jocular. You simply pump enough carbon-dioxide 2 into the mouthpiece of the tube while your fingers fluctuate upon those holes alternately, and some kind of melody would automatically flow out of the end of the flute.
With this misconception in mind, I took up my flute for the first time with a fully blown ego and equally fully blown air from my lungs.
To my devastating embarrassment, the air that I pumped so hard into the tube failed to be tenderized into anything remotely musical, but instead exploded abruptly, sounding as if the acid gas emitted from a Mexican who has had too much bean. Undeterred I kept blowing harder and harder till my face turned purple and my eye pupils almost popped out of their sockets, yet the stubborn flute refused to give in.
Such confrontation turned my compassion for flute into a kind of animosity, to the point where I almost broke it into two!
My flute teacher, who was a soft spoken young lady, calmed me down by gracefully playing a melody that sounded like a fluttering butterfly among the flowers. Her pose, gesture, expression and rhythm all seemed so easy, effortless and so jocular. She is a living proof that playing a musical instrument is not as easy as it seems, but that it will achieve its perfection as long as you keep on and never give up.
She showed me some basic techniques and certain tricks. Sure enough, my second try sounded much less awful than the first time, which blew up my already deflated confidence once again, this time not out of proportion, though.
雙關語的修辭功能在這篇文章中被利用到了極致。標題中的My first blow-out experience, 即可理解成“我第一次演砸的經歷”，也可以理解成“我第一次吹出來的經驗”。 文中的with a fully blown ego and equally fully blown air from my lungs， 再度巧妙地利用雙關語的作用，把抽象（膨脹的自我）與具體（肺部排出大量的氣）并列在一起，達到一種完美的修辭效果。文中還在多處恰到好處地使用與吹氣相關的詞匯，如 pump (排氣)， emit（排放），explode （爆破），blew up my already deflated confidence（鼓起本已癟下的信心）。文章結尾再度出現out of proportion這一短語，與文章的標題遙相呼應，為作文畫上一個完美的句點。
成就感就是這樣吹出來的。
