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We were playing a board game in Michigan. I was maybe 12 years old, we were on a family vacation. I don't remember which game it was.
Might have even been a card game, I don't know.
My brother and sisters, my dad, my mom all playing. I very much wanted to win. So I cheated.
And my dad caught me.
Funny, he didn't get mad at me. He simply asked me a question that revealed my cheat. I was busted red handed.
I remember the feeling I had. I looked at my dad briefly and knew I had nowhere to hide. I had cheated. My mom saw me get caught. My sibs saw me get caught. My dad did the catching.
I could feel the heat racing to my brain flushing my face with shame. I could do nothing but lower my head on the table, burying it in my hands and humiliation.
I didn't move. I couldn't. It seemed like forever. I couldn't look at anybody. I could hear my dad smile and laugh a little to himself. I could feel the faces my family must have been making to each other.
It was minutes (seemed like hours) before I moved again.
My dad let me dangle in the glaring spotlight of unwanted attention. He let the shame seep deep into my consciousness. He let my embarrassment fester.
No, I don't remember all of the circumstances surrounding that day, but seared into my memory is the shame of that moment.
Indeed, guilt sometimes gets a bad rap. Overdone it can be debilitating, no doubt.
But timely guilt is an important and healthy human emotion. It's our course correction. Guilt is unpleasant and painful and human nature wants to turn from pain. But productive pain straightens our moral compass. Guilt is the nag that explains right from wrong to our conscience.
When we remove it, gloss over it, run from it, ignore it, we have no course correction.
This is what concerns me so much about the Jackie Robinson West Little League scandal.
They cheated.
And there seems to be zero shame.
We see this so often with those in the public eye. From the steroid scandal in baseball to the college athletics recruiting scandals to disgraced politicians and CEOs to the leaders that conjured the phony map that allowed Jackie Robinson West to roster players that were outside their allotted territory.
My concern for the kids at JRW is not that they were part of a cheat-we all know the greater blame lies with the adults-adults using kids, stealing their youth to prop up their own egos.
(Although my sorrow for these kids only goes so far. I feel worse for the kids who lived in the correct district who didn't get to play because of the ringers brought in from the outside. And I feel worse for the kids JRW beat on their way to the American championship. Those kids might not have had to go home if JRW had obeyed the rules.)
My concern is that these self-serving adults are not giving these kids the lesson they should.
We wonder why ethics takes such a beating in the adult world sometimes. It's often because the right lessons are not learned young.
And then there are my parents.
They didn't make excuses for me. They didn't blame my cheating on the ill motives of others. They didn't justify it by telling me that others have cheated too. No one said my dad exposed my cheating because I was white. (Listen, blacks have had awful things happen to them over the years to be sure, this JRW thing simply isn't one of them.)
They also didn't declare me the winner in spite of my cheating.
My dad left me spinning, lurching, groping. He gave me no props for my awkward moment. He didn't take the pain away too soon. He allowed the guilt to do its work.
And it did.
When right pain is faced rightly...it can be life changing for the better.
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