Bad Social Decisions..Baloney!
Once again this afternoon, I heard Coach Phil Fulmer explain that a football player had made a “bad social decision”. Actually he was talking about a couple of players accused of attacking another person. The other person’s head injuries required four surgical staples to close. I have heard that “bad social decision” phrase used improperly for the past several months when the coah tries to explain why one of the University of Tennessee football players wound up on the wrong side of the law.
For clarification purposes, I would like to compare and contrast (a phrase some football players would not recognize as something from a classroom assignment) “bad social decision”, and “getting into trouble with the law”. There is a difference. Here goes:
BAD SOCIAL DECISIONS
- Belching at the dinner table in front of your in-laws.
- Picking your nose at a wedding reception.
- Pooting in public then placing your thumb on your forehead then yelling “Safety!”
- Calling “shotgun” when you are leaving the funeral home en-route to the graveyard.
- Wearing a Hells Angels jacket to the bank when you apply for a loan.
- Eating mashed vegetables with your hands.
TROUBLE WITH THE LAW
- Beating your girlfriend/spouse/significant other
- Smacking someone with a baseball bat
- Stealing
- Breaking someone’s face following a pick-up basketball game
- Keeping weed in your dorm room
- Fighting in bars
- Fighting with police
- Fighting period
- Threatening to beat someone
Do you see a pattern developing here?
Teachers in elementary school use the phrase “making a bad social decision” to describe children who have not yet learned to behave. When a person gets to college age, it is normally expected that they have left behind their propensity to “make a bad social decision” by reading the actions versus consequences chart on the 5th grade classroom wall.
A bad social decision-even a very loud air trumpet in Sunday School- will not get you in trouble with the law. So let’s quit ignoring the elephant in the living room and call those “social decisions” what they are. They are arrests. In some cases arrests for violent crimes.
Many of us have made bad social decisions. I even wore a white belt and a leisure suit once. But so far, none have caused me to land in the back of a patrol car or paddy wagon.
“Bad social decisions”… grow up.
