Weekend Assignment #3 – Recount the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given.

     I don't often give or take advice, especially bad advice but I'll give this a try any way. I won't go with the really bad advice I got from my divorce attorney the day of my final hearing. (I didn't take it by the way.) Instead... I am going to go with the advice I received from my country cousins when I was about 10 years old.

 

     We will call this Snipe Hunting Advice. Some of you country kids out there may know exactly where I am going with this. To that I say, wipe that silly smirk off you face right now!

 

     When I was about 10 years old, my sister and I went to Alabama to spend the summer with our aunts, uncles and all of those cousins. Not so familiar with the hard work involved in country living, our cousins took much delight in teaching us Florida Girls the ropes. There was a lot to learn about helping on the farm; corn to pick, peas to hull and eggs to collect from the chicken houses and always the next meal to cook.

 

     There were also a lot of fun things like catching fireflies and collecting them in a mason jar, tying a string to the leg of a June Bug and watching it fly around like a toy air plane, making corn husk dolls, blackberry picking, camping, homemade ice-cream churning, porch swings and riding lawnmower.

 

     One night Robert, Dale and Jeanese said that they were going to go snipe hunting in a few days and that if Theresa and I wanted to go they would teach us how to do it. For days they gave advice on how best to catch a snipe, and how to make the very best snipe call. We learned that a snipe is a nocturnal bird and had to be hunted at night. The excitement grew and the advice kept rolling in on best snipe hunting techniques.

 

     The big night finally came and we were led to the woods gunny sack and flashlight in hand along with the snipe calls that we had been practicing. This was also in fact my first experience with a barbed-wire fence. We were led to our separate posts and left alone in the dark to hold the gunny sack, eager to fill our sacks with unsuspecting snipes lured away from their nests by our well rehearsed snipe calls.

 

     We stayed in the woods holding our sacks for what may have been only moments but felt like and eternity to a 10 year old. Needless to say we never did see a single snipe that night, as a matter of fact I guess no one has ever seen a snipe on a snipe hunt before. I can just imaging my good humored cousins standing close by rolling on the ground laughing at these Florida girls falling for this time-honored, country tradition.

 

     This may or may not be the worst advice I was ever given but it was the first thing that came to mind when I read this weeks assignment. Thanks John for bringing back this fond or not so fond memory.

 

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