Text 2

The text below is about an awkward boy who has trouble finding a girlfriend. Read it carefully
and answer Questions 5-18 in the Question Paper.

1 I can make water!

2 All right, I know that most people can make water, which means to urinate, of course. But I
can do it scientifically! I did it with the advanced chemistry set that mum and dad gave me
for my thirteenth birthday.

3 “Mind what you do, Brian,” my dad warned. “We don’t want you killing yourself after we 5
spent all that money on your glasses.”

4 Putting on those glasses that dad was so worried about, I read the first experiment in the
instruction book. It was a recipe for water – mixing hydrogen and oxygen. Making the
hydrogen was easy but adding the oxygen turned out to be much more dangerous than
the book let on. According to the book, you hold a lighted match over a test tube of 10
hydrogen, and when you hear a popping noise you know that the oxygen has been added
through combustion. The book made it seem very simple and there was even a picture of
a serious boy, wearing a white coat and a neat hairdo, holding a match over his test tube.

5 But pictures in science books are never true to life. It would have been far more accurate
to show the boy with his hair standing on end, his white coat all mucky and his test tube 15
completely obliterated. If only the picture had shown that, I would have been more careful.
As it was, I held the lighted match over my hydrogen and there was a sonic boom. The
bottom blew out of my test tube, terrifying my cat IQ and bringing my mother racing in
from the backyard. Although I wrecked a perfectly good test tube and gave IQ the fright of
his nine lives, water had been created. There was a little pool of it on the floor. 20

6 “Look at that!” I cried, showing mum the pool.

7 “Brian Purvis,” she moaned, “you certainly know how to scare a cat good and proper.”

8 Yes, I’m clumsy. Everybody is clumsy now and then, it’s just that I’m better at it than
others. Like with food, for example. Eating dinner in front of the television is easy for most
people, they just balance the plate on their lap. Me? I end up with dinner all over my 25
pants. Plates just won’t stay on my lap. I’ve got non-stick knees.

9 You could say I’m very attractive to accidents, which may be why I’m not so attractive to
girls. They don’t like clumsy boys who carry their books then trip over and drop them down
a stormwater drain. It’s unromantic. It’s uncool. It’s also a waste of books. So I decided I
was a bit of a no-hoper as far as girls are concerned. At thirteen, I was the only boy in my 30
class who wasn’t going out with a girl. All the boys had photos of their girlfriends, colourful
prints which had pride of place on the insides of their locker doors. Me? I had the loneliest
locker door ever. I was the lone brain, the sort who would grow into a mad scientist and
spend his evenings building the perfect woman from bits of bodies and silicone chips. It
was a frightening thought. 35
10 That was why I decided to fall in love with Julie Andrews. Not the Julie Andrews who was
in The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins but the Julie Andrews who had red fuzzy hair
and was in my class. Believe me, two Julie Andrewses could never be more unlike. While
the film star version was delicate and graceful, the red fuzzy-haired version was loud,
rough and once boasted that she had smuggled a fairy penguin out of the zoo by stuffing 40
it in her bag on a school excursion. She had no sense of humour, which in a way was a
good thing because it meant that she didn’t laugh at me all the time. Like most people,
she called me Brain instead of Brian, but she seemed to respect me. At least, she always
asked me if she could copy my answers in maths.

(Adapted from How Do They Get Cranes on Top of Tal Buildings? by Doug Macleod)