Do you remember learning the four types of literary conflicts in high school literature class? \u00a0Let me refresh your memory. \u00a0They\u2019re man versus man, man versus nature, man versus society, and man versus self. \u00a0Well, there\u2019s one more that isn\u2019t in the textbooks. \u00a0It\u2019s man versus water pipe. \u00a0Now, do you remember all the elements of a good story? \u00a0The story I\u2019m about to tell you is non-fiction. \u00a0It takes place on our franch. \u00a0There is only one character to develop in my story. \u00a0It\u2019s my husband. \u00a0He is incredibly skilled with a stethoscope and intubation tube but not so much with a pipe wrench and plunger. \u00a0The setting is in the barn and pastures near water troughs or anywhere there\u2019s an outdoor pipe. \u00a0The plot of this story repeats itself every couple of months. \u00a0A pipe starts leaking. \u00a0Sometimes a few days pass before we realize there\u2019s a problem. \u00a0It\u2019s usually when our well runs dry and there isn\u2019t any water coming from the kitchen faucet in the morning. \u00a0Often still in pajamas, a frantic search ensues for a puddle of water. \u00a0You\u2019d think the climax of the tale would be when the leak is located. \u00a0Not quite yet. \u00a0It’s just the beginning of man versus water pipe. \u00a0It usually takes several attempts to get water flowing again. \u00a0This occurs over several days (sometimes weeks) because my husband also has to save lives in the emergency department. \u00a0He’ll return home one day from a shift having\u00a0inserted a tube into a patient\u2019s windpipe to restore\u00a0airflow and feel inspired to finish the\u00a0pipe repair that restores water\u00a0to the barn. \u00a0The climax of the story is when we no longer have to fill the water troughs with buckets of water from a house faucet. \u00a0The theme of the story is that mistakes are opportunities to learn something new. \u00a0Each way that doesn\u2019t work in repairing the water\u00a0pipe is actually a step forward in the right direction. \u00a0My husband rarely makes the same mistake twice so he’s eventually successful as George Bernard Shaw encouraged, “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.” \u00a0Conflict, in whatever form it takes, can make\u00a0us grow in ways we never anticipated. \u00a0I must admit, my husband has become quite skilled at outdoor plumbing. \u00a0Still, even with all his successes at the barn, only expert plumbers fix the\u00a0pipes inside our franch house. \u00a0I don\u2019t think my husband is quite ready to take on \u201cman versus wife.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Do you remember learning the four types of literary conflicts in high school literature class? \u00a0Let me refresh your memory. \u00a0They\u2019re man versus man, man versus nature, man versus society, and man versus self. \u00a0Well, there\u2019s one more that isn\u2019t in the textbooks. \u00a0It\u2019s man versus water pipe. \u00a0Now, do you remember all the elements […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":582,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}