{"id":10861,"date":"2014-09-12T18:30:02","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T18:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.briancullen.net\/stories\/?p=135"},"modified":"2020-08-18T02:49:57","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T02:49:57","slug":"the-watermelon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/2014\/09\/12\/the-watermelon\/","title":{"rendered":"The Watermelon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many years ago in the hills of Patagonia there was a village. Its  inhabitants were starving. They lived in fear of a dragon that  they had seen in their fields and they would not go to harvest  their crops.  One day a traveler came to the village and asked for food.  They explained that there was none because they were afraid of  the dragon. The traveler was brave and offered to slay the  dragon. When he arrived at the fields he couldn\u2019t see a dragon,  only a large watermelon. So he returned to the village and said,  \u201cYou have nothing to fear; there is no dragon, only a large  watermelon.\u201d The villagers were angry at his refusal to  understand their fear and hacked the traveler to pieces.  Some weeks later another traveler came to the village. Again,  when he asked for food he was told about the dragon. He too  was brave and offered to kill the dragon. The villagers were  relieved and delighted. When he arrived at the fields he also saw  the giant watermelon and returned to the village to tell the  villagers that they were mistaken about the dragon\u2014they need  have no fear of a giant watermelon. They hacked him to pieces.  More time passed and the villagers were becoming desperate.  One day a third traveler appeared. He could see how desperate  they were and asked what the problem was. They told him and he  promised he would slay the dragon so that they could go to the  fields to harvest their crops. When he got to the field he too saw  the giant watermelon. He reflected for a moment, then he drew  his sword, leaped into the field, and hacked the watermelon to  pieces. He returned to the villagers and told them he had killed  their dragon. They were overjoyed. The traveler stayed in the  village for many months, long enough to teach the villagers the  difference between dragons and watermelons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many years ago in the hills of Patagonia there was a village. Its inhabitants were starving. They lived in fear of a dragon that they had seen in their fields and they would not go to harvest their crops. One day a traveler came to the village and asked for food. They explained that there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11262,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions\/11262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}