Right Time to Speak Up and Speak

¶ … Right Time to Speak Up and Speak Out The Scenario When we let a situation go by without doing what's right -- speaking the truth or straightening out a mistake that ends up hurting someone -- we may tend to regret it later. When I was in high school, I had several male friends that played sports and some of them became close friends -- good enough friends that we stay in touch through email today.

Like a lot of adolescents, we were given to experiment with things we shouldn't be involved with, like attending parties where there were drugs and where alcohol was served. The only way I could get out of the house was to fudge the truth to my parents, telling them that I was going on an overnight to my friend's house (we didn't call them "slumber parties" then), and my parents trusted that I would be there.

On this particular night, there was a party planned by friends of ours, and because my friend, call him Tim, had parents that didn't really care if he went out and came home late, we were able to attend the party. Tim had actually broken his pinky finger on his right hand during a football game, and he had a splint on that finger (it was just a cracked bone, not a compound fracture, so it didn't require a cast and he could continue to play) during that time.

Tim was a superb athlete, and his face was featured often in the sports page for his basketball, baseball, and football achievements. We went to the party, drank a couple beers, and engaged in a bit of pot-smoking as well. At one point Tim went out in the front lawn to greet a car that had just arrived, and as he got close to street and the arriving car, a neighbor that we didn't know came out of her house to let the dog out to do it's little duty.

While she was on the front sidewalk, she looked over and saw Tim and mistakenly took the white gauze wrapped around his splint to be a marijuana joint, or a cigarette. What we didn't know was that she was the twin sister of the school secretary, Mrs. Nutting.

Apparently this neighbor proceeded to tell her twin sister that Tim (whom she knew from photos of his sporting exploits published in the local newspaper) was smoking at a party; her twin sister then told the dean of students and Tim was subsequently suspended from the football team for two weeks. I should have come forward to testify that what the neighbor saw was Tim's splint, and not a joint or a cigarette.

After all, albeit we did smoke pot in the back yard, it was also true that the neighbor did not see us smoking and mistook the splint for a smoke. However, if I had gone to his defense I would be admitting I was there, and my parents might have found out. Moreover, the school had a right to drug test Tim, and me making a big point of it might have backfired anyway.

Why does this stand out for me? Because I was wrong to be in attendance at a drug-alcohol party in the first place, and was lucky I didn't get busted, I count.