Directions: Read the story then answer the questions below.



[b]"City Girl"[/b]



I am a city girl at heart. I’ve never milked a cow – have no interest.



I was shocked when I attended my first “pig pickin’ ” after my husband and I moved to North Carolina from Boston. I had to avert my eyes from the huge pig, skin and head on, insides chopped and splayed open across an entire 12-foot long table.



“Y’all in duh country naw, girl,” the host told me happily, apparently thrilled to be the one to indoctrinate me into country living.



When, at 8 months pregnant, I volunteered to chaperone my son’s strawberry picking field trip, the other mothers looked at me strangely. I thought strawberries grew on tall bushes, not low to the ground. All that squatting sent me into early labor.



So, it is with this in mind that you must understand my attitude when I heard a “huge hurricane” was headed toward Rocky Mount. I thought back to my days growing up in Philadelphia, when snow storms where coming – “20 inches”-- never to materialize.



A long checklist ran in the local newspaper of things townspeople should get to prepare for the hurricane. My neighbor, Wayne, made a point of giving me a copy since he knew I was new to town. I took a cursory glance and thought nothing more of it.



While my neighbors were running around taping their windows, getting fresh batteries and prepping their generators, I was, quite literally, sitting in my glass house playing with the kids on the floor.



The rains started at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. This was, to my amazement, exactly what the weatherman had predicted.



These were no ordinary rains, either. From my glass living room, I could no longer see the front lawn or the trees. The rain was as thick as a woolen curtain. My husband’s car began floating out of the driveway by nightfall. The water, so insidious, began creeping up our front steps, overturning our potted plants and benches.



“This is unbelievable!” I yelled. I reached for the phone to dial Wayne. He had been born and raised in these parts, and surely, he would know what to do.



“Wayne,” I said worriedly into the receiver. “The water is coming up our front steps. It’s almost to our door!”



“Ours too,” he said, quite calmly, I thought, given the circumstances.



“What should I do?”



“Put out your sandbags. It will keep the water out as long as it doesn’t get too high.”



“Sandbags?”



“You didn’t get any? They were on the list,” he asked in disbelief.



No, I hadn’t.



What other title might fit this passage best?

"I had to [i]avert[/i] my eyes from the huge pig, skin and head on, insides chopped and splayed open across an entire 12-foot long table."



[i]Choose the best way to rewrite the above sentence.[/i]

What does [i]materialize[/i] mean?