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| Not me |
"The incident quickly sparked outrage in the small community. Many praised the immediate firing of the broadcasters." One person wrote, "those singled out in that video will never forget that. It will stick with them for the rest of their lives."
You may think that's hyperbole? Let me tell you. It struct a chord.
I was a scrub on the high school B-Team basketball squad. We practiced with the A-Team. The head coach was introducing a tip-in drill - put the ball against the backboard and a player following would tip it in. When my turn came, the coach said "just miss it like you usually do". Garnered quite a few laughs.
That was the end of my going nowhere basketball career. I turned in my uniform and quit. This of course, reveals my teen-age insecurities, but being shamed in front a peer group is achingly painful and the memory of it still brings bile to my throat. Stupid - I know. I'm confident I'm the only person on the planet who remembers this incident and it was surely forgotten by the coach and teammates by the following day.
The lesson here is, once words leave your lips, you can't retract them. Attempts at humor that attack or belittle are not funny. Don't under-estimate the power of your words.
Copyright © 2022 Dave Hoplin
I recall an incident when I was in 8th grade at good ol' GHS. Cliff Hanson was the phy ed teacher and he had a segment on what was euphimistically called 'tumbling'. Good description, I thought. Now it is more elegantly called 'gymnastics'. But, no matter how hard I tried, I could not do a flip - you know, run toward a rolled up gym mat, put your neck to it, and flip over, landing on your feet. Cliff seemed to think the problem was lack of motivation so he took to whacking us on the butt with a yardstick if we did not get all the way over correctly. I have never forgotten that to this day. I was probably saved by own lack of confidence since I would have attacked him if I had and I assume that would not have ended well since I was a pretty big, strong farm kid. Of course, I was not the only kid who was on the receiving end of that yardstick.
ReplyDeleteI remember the same unit. Front flips. I had weak upper body strength so I pushed off my head. Sprained my neck so bad I couldn't look left or right for 2 weeks.
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