{"id":18737,"date":"2017-06-20T13:28:47","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T17:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unclerickaudios.com\/?p=18737"},"modified":"2017-06-20T13:28:47","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T17:28:47","slug":"cold-wet-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/2017\/06\/20\/cold-wet-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cold, Wet Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Long ago when I was young, I used to dream of living in a log cabin on a farm in the hills. I had grown up in the suburbs and I thought it was boring. School was boring too. I wanted to live far out in the country where nobody would bother me. I didn\u2019t want to do boring school work anymore. I wanted to hunt and fish and swim and explore caves\u2014whenever I wanted to. I wanted to be strong and independent and spend most of my time alone.<\/p>\n<p>So, the summer after I graduated from high school, I decided to try out living off the land for a while. I found a place to camp on a farm beside a creek. I set up a tent made out of a ragged, worn old bedspread to keep myself and my things dry. I gathered some rocks and made a circle to build my campfire in. Ah, this was nice. Just like Davy Crockett.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/cold-wet-lesson.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-18738\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/cold-wet-lesson.jpg\" alt=\"Davy Crockett\" width=\"345\" height=\"377\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/cold-wet-lesson.jpg 345w, https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/cold-wet-lesson-275x300.jpg 275w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 345px) 100vw, 345px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\">The only real \u201cliving off the land\u201d I did was to catch a fish and cook it.\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t all that much fun\u2014I don\u2019t really like the taste of fish.\u00a0 I also quickly found out that being all alone wasn\u2019t fun for long.\u00a0 I started to wish I had somebody with me to talk to.<\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\">Then in the middle of the night, my plan suddenly changed.\u00a0 A tremendous thunderstorm came and I quickly found out that my tent was useless.\u00a0 The pouring rain came right through it, soaking me, my clothes and everything else I had with me.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t take me long to wake up and realize that I had to find another place to sleep.<\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\">I was miserable.\u00a0 Quickly I trotted through the wet pasture grass as the cold rain pelted down on me.\u00a0 I had to wade the creek to get back to my car, but I couldn\u2019t have gotten much wetter anyway.\u00a0 I was soaked, cold, sleepy and miserable.\u00a0 Living off the land was losing its appeal for me.<\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\">I drove into the nearby little town, parked in an empty lot and tried to sleep in my car.\u00a0 The rain and thunder kept coming for a while, then began to pass away.\u00a0 But sleeping was hard to do in my wet clothes.\u00a0 How I wished that I was warm, dry and with friends.\u00a0 What a long night that was!<\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\">Slowly the hours dragged by and the sky grew light.\u00a0 But still nothing was moving in the little town and I had to wait more hours before the town woke up and I could go to a restaurant and buy myself some breakfast.<\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\">I spent the rest of my vacation staying with my Uncle Pete and his family on his farm.\u00a0 That was fun.<\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\">I had learned that I didn\u2019t know myself very well.\u00a0 I had thought that I would like living alone in the woods, but I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 I thought it would be fun to catch my own food, but it wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 I had thought I knew how to make a good camp, but I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Oh, I enjoyed the fishing and swimming in the creek.\u00a0 I had enjoyed not having any school assignments to do.\u00a0 But all by myself, I soon got bored and lonesome.<\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-4234306093623655375aolmail_MsoNormal\">The moral of the story, little buddies is that you need to get to know yourself.\u00a0 You need to read lots of books, meet lots of people, go lots of places and do lots of different things.\u00a0 That way, you learn what you like to do, what you\u2019re good at and how to get along with other people.\u00a0 These are all important life lessons.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long ago when I was young, I used to dream of living in a log cabin on a farm in the hills. I had grown up in the suburbs and I thought it was boring. School was boring too. I wanted to live far out in the country where nobody would bother me. I didn\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2,4,5,6,7],"class_list":["post-18737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character-lessons","tag-character-concepts","tag-character-stories","tag-helping-parents-raise-kids-of-character","tag-kids-blog","tag-uncle-rick-audio-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.characterconcepts.com\/unclerick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}