When I was in, I think somewhere around fifth grade, although don’t hold me to it, I don’t know why you would.

I don’t know why you would care.

But around that time, growing up in Berks County, in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, home of me and Taylor Swift, around the fifth grade period, we went for a couple days, the grade, to the Conrad Weiser Homestead, I think is what it was called.

It was like a camping trip with students and teachers in cabins.

There was no point that I can recall.

It certainly wasn’t educational.

It wasn’t my cup of tea, but we did the thing.

And I remember that there was sort of a talent show of teachers.

And Mr.

Gabriel, who was my teacher, I think, in fifth grade, he got up and told a story about a man who he had known, who had had a very tough life.

And this man had ended up losing his home, losing his family, losing all of his worldly possessions.

And, you know, he had a start all over.

But this man prevailed because he was strong and tough and used to hardships.

This guy ended up wandering through the land and he would try to find odd jobs here and there to make money.

And he would sometimes have to resort to begging.

On occasion, he would actually have to steal.

He eventually got hired on by a farmer and he would work all day, learn the trade from the farmer, would live out in the fields near this farm.

And at the end of the week, he said to the farmer, hey, can I have some money for this?

And the farmer chased him off, didn’t give him any money.

But the man still did okay because he was strong and he was tough and he was used to hardships.

So he kept on trying to find his way and trying to figure out what he could do.

And, you know, he was following the water line, a coastline.

And so he eventually saw a ship where he convinced the ship’s captain to hire him on as a mate on this ship.

And it was hard and the food was often spoiled because they spent so long at sea.

But the guy did okay because he was strong and he was tough and he was used to hardships.

One day, his job was to watch, keep watch from the crow’s nest.

He had to keep watch for pirates and other land obstacles, icebergs, I don’t know.

He kept looking and he was taking this job really seriously and he would lean forward really far.

And then he fell 50 feet down and landed on the deck.

But he was okay because he was strong and he was tough and he was used to hardships.

Now I saw where this joke was going as soon as Mr.

Gabriel started it.

He made it take literally, there’s no exaggeration here, 7,000 hours.

He made it take an extremely long time.

And yeah, I don’t know.

It was ridiculous.

But I never forgot that he told that joke.

Anyway, it reminded me, when I thought of that joke and that trip to Conrad Weiser, it reminded me of another story I wanted to share, which I’ll do after the theme song, which is coming nice and early in this episode.

Your Daily Lex.

I’ve probably told bits and pieces of this story before, but I was a co-founder at a company called Midroll.

We eventually got acquired by a company called EW Scripts.

At some point, they wanted to send our management to Camp Joy.

EW Scripts is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Camp Joy is also somewhere in Ohio and it’s a campground.

It’s team-building stuff.

Folks who had done Camp Joy before at Scripts, other executives, were like, oh yeah, be watch out and whatever.

One of them encouraged us to take pillows.

Only I took my own pillow, which meant I had to fly to Cincinnati with my own pillow and there was no reason to take your own pillow, it was fine.

You had to do things like a ropes course.

They said, we’re not going to do anything like trust falls, and then we did exactly that, trust falls.

It was all fine.

The guy who was the person who would run it for us would always talk about adult beverages.

Tonight, let’s all meet by the fireplace and have adult beverages.

It was so weird.

The last day is supposed to be this big, scary thing where you go to the top of a flagpole and jump off.

That’s some confidence building exercise of some sort.

You’re strapped into something, I’m sure.

They’re not killing people.

Very few people have died there, as far as I know.

It was raining our last day, so we couldn’t do it, so we had to instead do a climbing wall.

I had never done a climbing wall before and I was like, I don’t know if I can do this.

Then I did.

I did climb the climbing wall and I was so pleased with myself.

They were like, yeah, you were all able to climb this climbing wall because of the support of the folks behind you who were cheering you on.

Even if you couldn’t climb the climbing wall, you tried the climbing wall.

Years later, we were on some trip and there was another climbing wall.

It was a family trip, not an E.W.

Scripps trip.

There was a climbing wall and I tried to do it and I could not do it.

I realized that I could only climb climbing walls with my company cheering me on behind me.

No, I don’t know.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it.

I realized really that this climbing wall that we were at was for people who were not my size.

My feet did not fit on these footholds and the next things to grab onto were all too low.

It was for shorter people.

It was for smaller people.

That’s my story.

I’m sticking to it.

Anyway, I’ve climbed climbing walls, so screw you other climbing wall at some place I was on vacation.

Anyway, those are my stories.

I hope you too are used to hardships.

Actually, on second thought, that sounds horrible.

I hope you’re not used to hardships.

I hope you don’t have to be used to hardships.

You deserve better.

You deserve soft ships.

Thank you.

Goodbye.

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