“你是在做补习广告吗？”有人问我。
“你在自吹自擂吧？”有人指责我。

俗话说，“牛不是吹出来的。”一个老师的好坏，不是靠他自己吹，而是看学生的成就。

说到吹，让我想起我上课的一个小插曲。作文的范围是第一次学习乐器的经验。我的学生是学银笛的。我就启发他在写吹银笛的过程中，可以利用“吹”（blow）这个单词的双关意义来做文章。比如，英语熟语里有“blow out of proportion”，还可以联想到inflated（充气）, deflated（瘪气）, fully-blown（膨胀）等与吹气相关的单词与词组。

结果，学生写出来的作文那可不是吹的——倍儿棒！

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.

双关语的修辞功能在这篇文章中被利用到了极致。标题中的My first blow-out experience, 即可理解成“我第一次演砸的经历”，也可以理解成“我第一次吹出来的经验”。 文中的with a fully blown ego and equally fully blown air from my lungs， 再度巧妙地利用双关语的作用，把抽象（膨胀的自我）与具体（肺部排出大量的气）并列在一起，达到一种完美的修辞效果。文中还在多处恰到好处地使用与吹气相关的词汇，如 pump (排气)， emit（排放），explode （爆破），blew up my already deflated confidence（鼓起本已瘪下的信心）。文章结尾再度出现out of proportion这一短语，与文章的标题遥相呼应，为作文画上一个完美的句点。

成就感就是这样吹出来的。