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Wednesday, October 9, 1996
Every kid who's grown up in the country knows about stealing
watermelons. I remember distinctly the first and last watermelons I
swiped.
I was six when the first offense occurred. the neighbor who joints the
back forty had a patch of John Browns, and watermelons were bigger in
those days than now. They say it's because families were longer and
naturally it took a bigger melon than what we market nowadays to feed
the family. Besides, I was grown before I knew that anything but the
heart of the melon was edible. The rind and the part where the seeds
were was for the pigs.
On this first theft, I selected the biggest melon in the patch - in
broad open daylight - 3 o'clock it was - on a very hot July afternoon.
Barefooted and a mile from the house, I literally punished myself
lugging that thing home. The more I sweated, the slicker the melon got,
but I was determined to get that trophy home and I made it.
In those days, fathers whipped sons for smoking behind the barn, but
not for stealing watermelons. (As I matured I realized the whippings
were more for concern of having the barn burn down than anything else.)
I didn't hide the melon, but presented it to my parents. The rebuffing
is as real today as 4 decades ago. If you're going to steal a
watermelon, make sure you get a ripe one. Plug it before you pluck it.
Mine was big and beautiful but 2 weeks short of being ripe - it was
barely pink on the inside.
I began by saying I remembered the first and last -but I didn't say
they were the same melon.
Yesterday I was in DeLeon and a friend had a load of big Black Diamonds
on his pickup. As I walked by, I snatched the biggest one on the truck
and brought that beauty home. See, I'm wiser than a six-year old. Make
the farmer deliver. Use you head and not your back.
Well, times have changed, but my luck hasn't. Would you believe -
yesterday's jewel was white-hearted!
Jerry Hulsey is a former school teacher who writes for fun.
One of the favorite examples used by writers, speakers, preachers and
politicians is the story of the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee.
The Sea of Galilee is living and well. Trees grow along its banks,
fishermen ply their trade and their efforts feed the people, children
run and play on the shores, and people nearby in general thrive and are
happy. Not many miles distant is another sea called the "Dead Sea."
There is no life there. The water is the saltiest of any sea in the
world. You will find no children freely at play in its waters, and no
fishermen set up trade on its shores, for there are no fish or other
living creatures in those unlivable waters.
Interestingly enough, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are both fed
by the Jordan River. The difference is that for every drop of water the
Sea of Galilee accepts, it passes on a drop of water to other parts of
the land. On the other hand, The dead Sea has no outlets and hordes
every drop of water that comes its way.
The analogies generally conclude with the fact that in order to
continue to thrive, you must be giving out some of what you take in.
However, there is another principle to be learned, and that is the
teacher-student relationship. The individual who learns and then teaches
someone else learns far more thoroughly and applies the lesson more
faithfully than do those who simply learn.
Message: "As ye sow, so also shall ye reap." The teachers who sow what
they have learned will reap benefits in the form of gratitude, better
relationships and frequently larger financial gains - plus an intense
happiness and joy that comes when you make someone else's life richer
and happier.
We can choose to learn and teach and, as a result, learn more, be more,
do more and have more, or we can simply learn and let it die. Learn,
then teach, and I will see you at the top!
The top is the gap between what you are and what you're capable of
being, physically, mentally, spiritually.
Zig Ziglar is a motivational speaker whose column is copyrighted and
distributed by Creators Syndicate Inc.
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