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爸爸在车道门口立着一块“Beware of Dog”的牌子，但其实我家里根本不存在这种叫做“dog”的生物。在我的童年里，倒是曾经有一只清心寡欲的乌龟住过我家，没多久却又不知所终。 We didn’t have a dog, but my father, a practical man, decided not to remove the “Beware of Dog” sign that the house’s previous owners had left on the driveway[1] gate. We were transplants[2] twice over—he and my mother had come from Taiwan to the United States; his now-expanded family of five had moved from New England to Los Angeles—and here, after all those miles traveled and paychecks saved, we would make our home. Dad found it sensible to have strangers believing that a creature of instinct was standing guard.[3] What I really wanted, though, was a puppy[4]. I bothered my parents about it to no end[5], thinking that the sign should reflect some aspect of reality—if not the beware part, then at least the dog. So my father must have figured he’d gotten a break when, one day, while in the car returning from a swimming lesson, my brothers and I spotted a tortoise crawling along the sidewalk.[6] We clambered[7] out and gathered around. He was about the size of a dinner plate. A slow-moving, noiseless, virtually maintenance-free[8] animal, appearing on our way home. My father looked skyward. It must have been willed[9]. He grasped the shell at three and nine o’clock, like a steering wheel, and set the creature in the back of the station wagon.[10] | 
