First Day at School It was my first day at school in London and I was half-excited and half-frightened. On my way to school I wondered, what questions the other boys would ask me and practiced all the answers: "I am nine years old. I was born here but I haven't lived here since I was two. I was living in Farley. It's about thirty miles away. I came back to London two months ago." I also wondered if it was the rule for boys to fight strangers like me, but I was tall for my age. I hoped they would decide not to risk it. No one took any notice of me before school. I stood in the center of the playground, expecting someone to say "hello", but no one spoke to me. My teacher was called Mr. Jones. There were 42 boys in the class, so I didn't stand out there, either, until the first lesson of the afternoon. Mr. Jones was very fond of Charles Dickens, so he asked several boys if they knew Dickens' birthplace, but no one guessed right. A boy called Brian, the biggest in the class, said: "Timbuktu” and Mr. Jones went red in the face. Then he asked me. I said: "Portsmouth” and everyone stared at me because Mr. Jones said I was right. This didn't make me very popular, of course. “He thinks he's clever," I heard Brian say. After that, we went out to the playground to play football. I was in Brian's team, and he obviously had Dickens in mind because he told me to go in goal. No one ever wanted to be the goalkeeper. "He's big enough and useless enough;" Brian said when someone asked him why he had chosen me. As the boy kicked the ball hard along the ground to my right, I threw myself down quickly and saved it. All my team crowded round me. My bare knees were grazed and bleeding. Brian took out a handkerchief and offered it to me. "Do you want to join my gang (team)?" he said. At the end of the day, I was no longer a stranger. 小题1: The writer prepared to answer all of the following questions EXCEPT "__________".
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