Some situations are viewed in black and white; right and wrong. Yet, many people think situations also have a grey area where solutions are not so easily discerned. This is not just about the choices people make, but the thought process they go through to arrive at their decisions.
What Do You Think? Submitted for Your Consideration and Conversation
Your son joins the high school basketball team. You’re excited to go to the first game and see him play. Making sure your camera phone is fully charged, you head off to watch the game.
Arriving early, you find a great spot from which to video. All through the game you shoot video of your son on the court, action on the sidelines, and the crowd cheering. Your son plays well, and they win the game in the last minutes.
Driving home, he is excited about the game and discussing every point and how the team rallied at the end to win. He’s happy, and you are bursting with pride at his contributions to the team win.
Later that evening, you move the videos onto your computer and begin sorting through them. A few short ones you upload to social media to share with family and friends.
As you review one video of the coach talking with the team on the sideline during a time-out, you notice that your microphone captured the coach’s words to the team. During the game, you hadn’t noticed or perhaps hadn’t been able to hear as clearly as you can on the video.
Happening late in the game, clearly you can hear the coach berating the kids on the team. He is getting in front of each kid and telling them all they are doing wrong, calling each of them worthless, and cursing at them about their performance. He uses words like “loser” and much worse. You can see the dejection and shame on the faces of the team as the coach lays into them.
What do you think of the coach’s treatment of your son and the other players? You know that they rallied after this happened, and that your son was in a good mood following the game; he seemed happy. Do you think you would dismiss the coach’s behavior as a “pep talk” and “effective” or would you be upset by the negative and bullying techniques he used? Do you think you would mention it to your son outright, question him slyly about his coach, or say nothing?
What if one of the players had been injured during the last moments of the game? Would that upset you more or seem irrelevant to you?
Do you think that you would share the video online to see how others react to it? Or, feeling happy with the game win, would you secret the video away?
Lastly, do you think you would say anything to the coach, or feel too intimidated or unsure to “interfere” with his coaching of the team, even if you saw it happen again?
