An Effective Teacher!

I have not yet included exerts from my book on this blog. Since the book includes numerous life lesson I believe are worth considering, I think that I will post some of them from time to time. Here is the first one. Enjoy..

As a teenager I was constantly jumping over whatever was in my way. It didn’t matter if it was a fence, the creek in the pasture, or a manure pile. If I thought I could hurdle it, I’d give it a shot. One cold January morning when I was fifteen or so, I was on my way to feed our sheep, which was another one of my responsibilities as a young man. The time I allotted to my chores was somewhere between “lickity split” and “slower than a seven-year itch.” Some days I did my chores quickly and some days at a snail’s pace. The speed at which I worked was usually dependent on the amount of daydreaming I was doing at the time, which usually depended whether or not Dad was off shelling corn somewhere. My pace varied so much, only one thing was certain: you could never set your watch by my work habits. That particular winter morning I’d taken off for the sheep pen in a dead run. The only thing separating me and the sheep was a dilapidated barbed-wire fence strung with wool from animals satisfying an itch now and then. As I approached the fence, instead of slowing to a walk, I hurdled it in a way that would put any high school athlete to shame.

What happened next was a blur. A second later I was lying on a layer of frozen sheep manure. Now if you happen to be familiar with frozen sheep poop, you’re probably aware that it’s in the shape of cat-eye marbles and just as hard. You can imagine how I looked sprawled on the ground amid several startled black-face, woolly ewes, with marble sized indentations on the part of my body that had just a moment prior violently contacted the frozen ground. As I sat up to regain my composure, I turned and there he was. Glaring green eyes. Nostrils flaring. Ears back as if pasted against his black head, charging straight toward me. Bang! That old buck sheep nailed me in the side of the head with a concerted blow that sent me reeling back to the frozen ground. He had allowed me no time to recover from the self-administered blow seconds earlier. The only thing in that pen harder than the frozen manure was that buck sheep’s head. The pain was excruciating while the stars in my head were numerous. This time, though, I stayed prone on the ground until he walked off knowing he had eliminated any threat I may have posed to his numerous girlfriends. When I did finally come around, I realized that being knocked on my rear didn’t mean I was immune to being knocked on my back if I made another dumb decision. A friend of mine from Texas tells me, “If you want to be dumb, you better be tough, and the dumber you are, the tougher you better get.” I would add that if you want to butt heads with a sheep, be sure you have a thick skull. That sounds like reasonable advice to me.

Here is the lesson:

From time to time, Sh** can be an effective teacher. Don’t ever forget that if you’re stuck in it and praying to find a way out, staying in it for a while might be the answer to your prayers.

Later