Ritch was a shy kid. In primary school, he didn't speak up for himself, and he worried a lot. When he got to high school, he decided to change. And so he began to develop a sarcastic sense of humor (黑色幽默) to keep the other kids from picking on him.
To his joy, it worked. He became confident (自信的) and made more friends. And he started to become famous for his jokes. Once he made fun of a classmate about a poor mark on a math test. "It turned out I got a hundred on the test, and he didn't do so well," Ritch said. "And I kidded him unmercifully (冷酷无情地) about it."
Then one day, his good friend Holly pulled Ritch aside. She said to him, "You know sometimes you really hurt people's feelings." Ritch was shocked. He always saw himself as someone who made his friends laugh. He couldn't imagine that he might hurt them.
"But I kept thinking about Holly's words, and I kept turning them over in my mind," he said. "Finally, I realized that she was right. I noticed how my humor was hurting other people, and I changed it."
From then on, Ritch began to be careful about his words. He said he should thanked Holly. "She cared enough to say something to me, something that probably wasn't easy to say," he said. "But it was something that changed me."
