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One cold day last November, my wife and I came home from work to a sick young daughter and we decided to stay at home for the night. Problem was, we had two tickets to see Miranda July, the performance artist, being interviewed at the Herbst Theatre. We decided to sell them online for $50. One hour before the event, a guy named Peter called me and said he wanted to buy the tickets. Since the time was limited, I told Peter to pay me the next day. Peter seemed touched and we said a fond goodbye.
However, a month later, Peter still didn’t pay me back. A few more weeks passed. Another month, there’d been one e-mail promising to mail the check, then silence.
Maybe he was having a hard time, I thought. But truth was, Peter seemed to be having a pretty normal time. According to the pictures and messages on his Facebook, he had been playing golf, dancing happily with his friends, and traveling on a boat. But he just refused to answer my calls, or reply to my e-mails or messages. So I tried reaching him with my wife’s phone one night. And he didn’t pick up when I called, but texted right back, playfully wondering who might be calling him.
“You should go to his office,” my wife said, “he would have to give you the money if all his coworkers (同事) were watching.”
But I didn’t want to become a debt collector. My efforts to reach Peter over these months had been light and I wanted to keep it that way. My initial exchange with Peter had been just two regular people agreeing to handle things humanly. There was a rare niceness in that, and I still wanted to keep that balloon in the air, however disappointing it was starting to look. I wanted to believe we could still trust each other.
问: According to the first paragraph, what reason did my wife and I decide to sell the tickets?

Crossing your legs is an extremely common habit; most people don’t even notice that they’re doing it when they sit down. While you may find it comfortable to sit with one knee crossed over the other, it might be causing health problems that you are not aware of.
A study published in Blood Pressure Monitoring stated that sitting with your legs crossed can increase your blood pressure. The reason for this is that the blood in your legs has to work against gravity to be pumped back to your heart and that crossing one leg over the other increases resistance, making it even harder for the blood to circulate (循环). This causes your body to increase your blood pressure to push the blood back to the heart. You won’t feel any immediate effects, but repeated, drawn-out increases in blood pressure can cause long-term health issues. So, do you plan to sit for a long period of time? Don’t keep your legs crossed.
“Crossing your legs at the knee can also cause pressure on the major nerve in your leg that passes just below your knee and along the outside of your leg,” explains Richard Graves, a medical expert. This pressure can cause numbness and temporary paralysis (麻痹) of some of the muscles in your foot and leg, preventing you from being able to raise your ankle—what we know as that “pins and needles” sensation. While the feeling of discomfort may only last a minute or two, repeatedly crossing your legs until they feel numb can cause permanent nerve damage.
So next time you sit down, try to get yourself in the habit of sitting with both of your feet on the floor. Not only will it help your posture and stability, but it will also save your health in the long run.
问: According to the first paragraph, what can we learn about crossing one’s legs?