What are YOU going to hell for?

[VanMan2000]

We've all done things in our life that we are not proud to recall. I've had many experiences that I file in the "What the hell was I thinking?" file. This is but one of them. In general I am not a horrible person, but on this day I was not a nice Toastmaster.

A co-workers mother was a Special Education teacher and needed volunteers to help coach at the Special Olympics. Being the curious, benevolent type, I volunteered along with said co-worker. Upon arrival, my co-worker(Brad) and I were assigned Olympians to coach. (One each) The young girl that I was assigned had no visible physical handicaps and mentally seemed to be quite responsive. Being the competitive type, I immediately sized up the competition and determined that barring a miracle we were going home with multiple medals. (I can't help it, I like to win) Unfortunately, things didn't work out that way for us.

The first event was the Softball Toss. My girl was competing against 6 other Olympians with severe handicaps, so I counted this one as a win before it even started. Wrong. My girl came in 6th place, finishing behind the kid the wheel chair. VERY disappointing. However, this was just a preview of things to come. My girl was getting her ass kicked all over the place! No medals at all, just courage ribbon after courage ribbon. Sigh. Meanwhile Brad's fully handicapable prodigy is collecting gold left and right. WTF?!?

The final event of the day is the 100 meter walk. I told her before the event, "We've been watching this all day, and every time they blow the whistle, these guys take off running. I know it says walk, but if they start running, you run too!" I positon myself at the finish line to "coach" my girl during the event. Sure enough they blow the whistle and the other Olympians take off running, and she's still walking!!! At this point I'm screaming "Run damn it, Run!" She finally picks up the pace and finishes fourth. I knew she finished fourth, SHE knew she finished fourth, but no one else did. (It was pretty close at the end there) So the monitor is walking down the line asking the coaches where their Olympians finished, and when she gets to me I feel a cold chill up my back and answer, "Third Place". I've now gone as low as I could ever possible dream and actually cheated at the Special Olympics.

It gets worse. All the Olympians and coaches ate in shifts, one group at a time and we were the last to eat. There was a pretty exact count of how many people were there and conversely, a pretty exact count on how much food they had. One per person. (I kind of knew this) Upon completing my lunch, I was still hungry and sent my girl up to grab me another sandwich. No sooner do I get said sandwich and take a bite do I see walking right in front of us a coach and Olympian. I overhear the conversation and it goes something like this. "I don't know what happened, there was supposed to be enough for everyone. They ran out of sandwiches." To make matters worse, it's the Olympian I've just cheated out of third place as well. Sigh.

No I'm not making this up, nor am I proud of it, and I'm relatively sure that if there is a "hell" I've got a reservation waiting for me. [img]images/smilies/icon_evil.gif[/img]