A Bad Decision by Mike Freeman

A Bad Decision

By Mike Freeman

Two-a-day workouts are common for swimmers and water polo players in high school and college. Servite High School is no exception. Our only time off occurs on Sundays and game days.

We are up at 5 a.m. and drive around picking up teammates to start workouts in the pool by 6 a.m. We finish 85 minutes later, take a quick shower, and pile into our cars to drive to school several miles away. We almost always find time to stop at a Winchell's donut shop to get a few donuts and a Coke. This stop-off to school is more important than arriving at class on time.

Tired from working out, our eyes stinging with pool chlorine, and our blood sugar counts off the charts, we begin our grand learning experience at our first class. As the morning progresses, we emerge from our stupor to join our classmates in learning and lunch.

We finish sixth-period class, load up our cars with teammates, and head to afternoon practice.

Only seniors are allowed to sit in the front seat of the cars. Juniors receive that privilege only when no other seniors are present. All underclassmen must sit in the back. Occasionally, freshmen are thrown in the trunk.

After a couple of hours of working out, we drop off our teammates at their houses and head home to eat our body weight in food at family dinners. Then we have "homework optional" time before going to bed.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

One warm summer night, just before starting our senior year, a group of us were wondering what to do. Mike, Tim, and I were members of the water polo and swim teams. Rick wasn’t; he was a varsity cheerleader. Idle time for aquatic team members typically does not end well. We were hoping Rick would keep us out of trouble. He failed.

Our high school football team was going through their hell week workouts and sleeping overnight in the gym. We heard they were complaining about two-a-day workouts. This did not move our hearts. There was no empathy. It inspired us to take action.

We decide to wait until the football players go to sleep. We sneak into the gym through a side door right by the coach's office. The other Mike chickens out at the last moment and abandons our adventure. Was this a moment of cowardice or wisdom?

The coaches did not see or hear us as we tiptoe past their door. We run through the gym amongst all the exhausted, whiny, sleeping football players, making as much noise as we can.

We wake all of them up. As we sprint through the dark gym, we aim toward the door on the opposing side, leaving a wake of tired, grumpy football players behind us, desperately trying to figure out what is happening.

Rick places his hand on the exit door handles and pushes the doors open a few inches. So far, everything is going exactly the way we hoped and planned. I am ecstatic!

“Ka-chang!” go the doors as they stop opening due to a chain wrapped around their handles.

“#@$&%#!” I think.

They offer no escape!

Like a couple of trapped rats, we creep along the wall to the front entrance of the gym. The gym's darkness and confusion provide diminishing protection. The doors are also chained from the inside!

The only escape is through the door we came in... on the other side of the gym... with a swarm of angry, motivated-to-hurt-someone football players... to go through!

“Get them, boys!” I hear several of the football players yell out.

“Let’s kill them!” other players reply with enthusiasm.

There is chaos. My colleagues and I make the horrific decision to try to escape through the door we came in. We start running in that direction.

Bam! Tim, who is leading our way to the exit door, all of a sudden goes sideways as two massive human bodies hit him.

“They have had too much tackle practice,” I think.

Crunch! Rick is taken down painfully as he vainly tries to run between colliding bodies.

Having seen my two brave compatriots go down, I decide to stop running and start hiding to avoid violence. I conceal myself behind a large banner against the wall, praying that I become invisible.

“One of them just hid behind the banner!” a voice in the dark cries out.

I run from behind the banner and attempt to weave through a sea of shadowy figures.

“Maybe they will think I am one of them,” I think with unrealistic optimism.

I zigzag toward the exit door. My hope starts to soar. I can see a clear path. I turn on the afterburners and sprint toward my door of freedom. Only a few more steps to go.

“I might make it!” I start to think.

My turning-invisible prayer is rejected out of hand by God.

A few short feet from my door of liberty, someone grabs me by the collar and jerks me backward, bringing me down to the ground.

“I got one of them!” a voice from behind exclaims with glee.

The pandemonium starts to die down as the football players take the three of us into the coach’s office. The coaches are more upset than the football players. With bloodshot eyes and a scowling voice, they ask for the team captains to come to their office. The captains arrive.

We are all members of the same tight-knit senior class. Any hope for a painless outcome free of significant consequences is quickly evaporating. The mood in the room is tense, vengeful, and dark.

“What do you want to do with them?” the coaches ask.

The three of us hang our heads down, waiting for the firing squad of team captains to pull their triggers. Death would be too easy of an out considering what we had done to them.

“This was a bad decision and plan,” I think. 
“What were we thinking?” I continue. 
“Rick should have talked us out of doing this!” I feebly rationalize.

A few seconds pass. A few of the coaches start getting paddles out of their desk drawers. In those days, students would receive swats to encourage improvement in behavior and attitude. Nightmarish visions of getting paddled by the coaches till sunrise flow through my brain.

The captains confer.

“Let them go,” they murmur.

The only ones more shocked than the four of us are the football coaches.

“Get out of here,” the coaches instruct us.

They did not have to say it twice. The three of us vanished into the night as quickly as possible, stunned and joyfully delirious.

School started the following week. I ran into one of the football captains and had to ask him why they let us go.

“We were so tired, we just wanted to go back to sleep,” he said.

Wow!

Our bad decision results in a blindside outcome. We were blessed by unexpected mercy. Should we learn something from this?

Have you ever been the recipient of unexpected mercy? Should we practice it with others in our lives?