Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

PART 1 Expressions

1. Like all of our debates about Jesus, this conversation went nowhere.

go/ get nowhere: to have no success or make no progress

He was getting nowhere with the Bentley case.

get sb nowhere/ get sb nowhere fast = not help sb achieve anything

A negative attitude will get you nowhere.

I soon realized that being tough was getting me nowhere fast.

2. In the homelands, the firstborn son almost becomes the father/husband by default because the dad is off working in the city.

by default: 缺席；默认情况下

1. If you win a game, competition etc by default, you win it because your opponent did not play or because there were no other competitors

Spassky won the first game, and was awarded by the second by default, when Fischer failed to put in an appearance.

2. If sth happens by default, it happens because you did not do any thing to change it.

I would rather pay the individuals than let the money go to the State by default.

3, The two of them fought and bickered the whole time, and after that first trip my mother refused to go back.

bicker: to argue, especially about sth very unimportant 口角

bicker about/ over sth

They kept bickering over who should answer the phone. 

4. I watched him try to assert himself and impose his ideas of what he thought his family should be.

assert oneself: to behave in a determined way and say clearly what you think

Women began to assert themselves politically.

asset itself: if an idea or belief asserts itself, it begins to influence sth

National pride began to assert itself.

5. He’d slip me pocket money now and again after my mother said I’d had enough.

slip sb sth/ slip sth to sb: to give sb sth secretly or without attracting much attention

I slipped him a ten-dollar bill to keep quiet.

Carr slips the ball to King who scores easily.

6. Looking back, I almost miss his pothead days because the weed mellowed him out.

mellow: (a.) （瓜果）成熟的； （酒）芳醇的；（声音）柔和的

（v.） if sb mellows or is mellowed, they become gentler and more sympathetic

Paul's certainly mellowed over the years.

mellow sb out: informal, to become relaxed and calm, or to make sb like this

7. He’d been hungry, tried to heat up some food on the stove, and passed out on the couch while it was cooking.

pass out: to become unconscious

I nearly passed out when I saw all the blood.

8. To this day I’ll never forget the patronizing, condescending way they spoke to her.

condescending: [ˌkɒndɪˈsendɪŋ] 屈尊的；傲慢的，SYN patronizing, behaving as though you think you are better, more intelligent, or more important than other people, used to show disapproval

condescend: (v.) eg. Take care not to condescend to your readers.

9. For years Abel didn’t lay a finger on her.

not lay a finger on sb: to not hurt sb at all, especially to not hit them

Don't lay a finger on me, or I'll call the police!

文中还有一个类似的表达: After that, she never raised her hand to her children again.

10. But eventually I started to see why the business was hemorrhaging money.

hemorrhage(American) / haemorrhage (British): ['hemərɪdʒ] (n.)/ (v.) 大出血; 引申为to lose a lot of sth over a short period of time, such as money or jobs

The once prosperous town has hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs over the last 15 years.

a hemorrhage of jobs from the region

PART 2 Thoughts

It was the most terrifying moment of my life. I had never been that scared before, ever. Because there was no purpose to it -- that's what made it so terrifying. It wasn't discipline. Nothing about it was coming from a place of love. It didn't feel like something that would end with me learning a lesson about forging my mom's signature. It felt like something that would end when he wanted it to end, when his rage was spent. It felt like there was something inside him that wanted to destroy me.

心理学上有一个“踢猫效应”的概念: 一父亲在公司受到上司的批评，回家后就把调皮的孩子揍了一顿，受到委屈的孩子就去踢身边的猫。这一现象反应了当一个人当一个人情绪变坏的时候，潜意识会驱使他向比自己更弱的对象发泄。在这一章节里，显然Trevor的继父是借由Trevor仿造母亲签名的事由来发泄他自己内心的负面情绪。继父的暴力和情绪的失控再一次爆发出来，让人不禁担心后面会发生的悲剧。学会控制自己的情绪是一种很重要的能力和素养。想起之前团队里有一个队友，她是那种心情不好都放在脸上的人，此时无论你和她说什么话她都会充耳不闻或者声色俱厉地回答你，即使你并不是那个引起她不快的人。后来私下里和她说过这件事，她反而说把不满和不舒服都藏在心里是一种虚伪，表达自己的情绪是一种率真。然而我觉得，要把愤怒发泄出来是容易的，但问题是发泄者的情绪是得到平复了，却引起了被把发泄人的负面情绪并传到到更多人身上。懂得控制自己的情绪是不仅是对他人的一种尊重，也是自己的一种教养所在。