What does the author advocate in the passage？

. Or maybe I was hungry. The simple truth is, when I walked into the living room and my 12-year-old son looked up at me and said. "I love you," I didn't know what to say. For several long seconds all I could do was standing there and staring down at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He must need help with his homework was my first thought. Or he's going to hit me up for an advance on his allowance. Or he's assassinated his brother—I always knew it would happen someday—and he's trying to prepare me gently for the news. Finally I asked, "What do you want?" He laughed, and started to run from the room. But I called him back. "Hey, what was that all about?" I demanded. " Nothing," he said, grinning, "My health teacher said we should, tell our parents that we love them and see what they say. It's sort of an experiment. "

The next day I called his teacher to find out more about this "experiment. " And, to be truthful, to find out how the other parents had reacted. "Basically, most of the fathers had the same reaction you did," my son's teacher said. "When I first suggested we try this, I asked the kids what they thought their parents would say. They all laughed. A couple of them figured their folks would have heart attacks. " Some parents, I suspect, resented what the teacher had done. After all, a junior-high-school health teacher's job is to teach children how to eat balanced diets and brush their teeth properly. What does saying "I love you" have to do with that? It is, after all, a personal thing between parents and their children, nobody else's business. "The point is," the teacher explained, "feeling loved is an important part of health. It's something all human beings require. What I'm trying to tell the kids is that it's too bad we don't all express those feelings. Not just parents to children and not just boys to girls. A boy should be able to tell his buddy that he loves him. "

The teacher, a middle-aged man, understands how difficult it is for some of us to say the things that would be good for us to say. His father never said those things to him, he admits. And he never said them to his father — not even when his father was about to die. There are a lot of us like that. Men and women, who were raised by parents who loved us but never really said so. It is a common reason for the way many of us behave.

But as an excuse it is starting to wear thin. Our generation has devoted a great deal of attention to getting in touch with our feelings and verbalizing our emotions. We know, or should know, that our children — sons as well as daughters — need more from us than food on the table and clothes in the closet. We know, or should know, that a father's kiss will fit as comfortably on the cheek of a son as on that of a daughter.

So when my son came to me that evening for his bedtime kiss—a kiss that seems to be getting briefer every night—I held on to him for an extra second. And just before he pulled away, I said in my deepest, most manly voice, "Hey, I love you too. " I don't know if saying that made either of us healthier, but it did feel pretty good. Maybe next time when one of my kids says, "I love you," it won't take me a whole day to think of the right answer.

Why did the author's son say "I love you" one day when he arrived home?

ow takes so much of many adults' lives that there is little room for anything else.

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助飘零于苦水深海之上，直达绝望之彼岸。

吾求爱，盖因其赐吾狂喜——狂喜之剧足令吾舍此生而享其片刻；吾求爱，亦因其可驱寂寞之感，吾人每生寂寞之情辄兢兢俯视天地之缘，而见绝望之无底深渊；吾求爱还因若得爱，即可窥视圣哲诗人所见之神秘天国。此吾生之所求，虽虑其之至美而恐终不为凡人所得，亦可谓吾之所得也。

吾求知亦怀斯激情。吾愿闻人之所思，亦愿知星之何以闪光。吾仅得此而已，无他。

death because of their lifestyle. drinking too much alcohol, smoking more heavily than any other group.

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ritten questionnaires. Our respondents were both men and women, with the latter slightly in the majority.

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the conditions for a headache. Very loud noise is unpleasant, and people usually remove themselves from it.

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Flight attendants, who start as low as $ 12,000 per year, are paid meagerly. No question.

But for all the rhetoric stirred by last month's strike against American Airlines, few have dared to breathe perhaps the key question—a 60-year-old question. Are flight attendants indispensable guardians of passengers' safety and well-being? Or, are they flying waitresses (85% are women) and waiters who are becoming less important to passengers willing to sacrifice frills for cheap fares? Fright attendants find the second suggestion repugnant. "We're very highly trained in first aid and CPR," says Wendy Palmer, an American Air fines flight attendant based in Nashville, "Our goal is to evacuate an airplane in a minute or less. That's what we're there for. In the meantime, we do serve drinks and food. "

"But maybe the time has come to let the free market determine if passengers value flight attendants enough to pay for them," says Thomas Moore, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Customers willing, there's no reason airlines can't hand out sandwiches and soft drinks as passengers board. Then they could be on their way with, perhaps, one safety expert on board.

"I'd suspect some people would be willing to pay dirt-cheap fares," says Bill Winter, spokesman for the Libertarian Party, an opponent of government regulation, "Other (airlines) would go in the opposite direction and there would be three attendants for each flier. "

Already millions of passengers have shown an eagerness to sacrifice service for lower fares. Southwest Airlines, which doesn't offer meals or assigned seating, has been the fastest-growing and most profitable airline in the industry. Southwest never staffs a jet with more attendants than the Federal Aviation Administration requires.

The FAA requires at least one flight attendant for every 50 seats. A 122-seat Boeing 737 must have three flight attendants even if it's flying only a few passengers. Union contracts often require more. Among its demands, American Airlines wants the option of staffing its jets at the FAA minimum.

No other form. of transportation falls under such rigid government control. Passengers aboard Amtrak and Greyhound aren't even required to wear seat belts. But climb aboard a Boeing 757, and you not only have to be strapped in, but four specialists are there to supervise a rare evacuation.

The National Safety Council estimates that 1 in 2.2 million people are killed in airline crashes each year. There are about 90,000 airline flight attendants employed by U. S. carriers. They cost the airlines $ 2.7 billion a year, assuming they average $ 30,000 per year in salary and benefits. If they save 100 lives per year, each life costs $ 27 million.

Dee Maki, National president of the Association of Flight Attendants, says 100 saved lives is a gross underestimate. No one tracks the actual number, but Maki says more than 100 heart-attack victims are saved each year by attendants.

Maybe one on-board attendant is all that's needed for safety, says Moore, an opponent of government regulation. "I don't know. But the FAA undoubtedly makes the wrong decision. Government always makes the wrong decision because they don't have the right information.

John Adams, former vice president of human resources for Continental Airlines, doubts that deaths would increase much if the number of flight attendants were cut in half. "Flying is very safe. It's much safer than riding a bus or a train," he says.

No one doubts that flight attendants have a tough job. They make about 20% what pilots make and often less than baggage handlers. Stuck in a metal tube for hours with cramped passengers battling nicotine fits, they are constantly being driven to go the extra mile for customer service.

They have to worry about policies concerning theft wei

in the last paragraph.