Back in my mid-late 20s, I hit a pedestrian. I was driving along Redlands Blvd. going west past the Redlands Mall, and a man started crossing the street. If he had kept going, he would have been fine. But he stopped, turned and looked straight at my car, and started walking back toward the sidewalk. I did not have time to react, and we met "head to windshield" at the curb. I thought I had just killed someone. He was pretty messed up--spent 3 months in the hospital. My insurance company "invited" me to a mediation hearing where I was found "zero" percent at fault, and the pedestrian was found "100" percent at fault. Prior to this incident, I had been eating frozen yogurt with my friend; the man I hit had been drinking beers all afternoon behind the carwash with his buddies after a long, hot day of work. His blood alcohol level was sky-high. Even with that verdict, I still felt terrible. I (my car) jacked the guy up pretty badly. My instinct in the days following the accident was to visit the guy in the hospital--at least send him a card. "Do not--under any circumstances--attempt to communicate in any way with the man you just hit" was the message from the insurance company, as my effort might be construed as an admission of guilt. So I didn't.
While coaching the women's tennis team for Cal State San Bernardino, I was called into the Athletic Director's office for comments I had made to one of my players. "Do you need some help with those?" Seven words--that's all it took. A player was attempting to take off her warm-ups after warming up in preparation for our match against UC San Diego. The head coach had taken the weekend off (she was pregnant) so it was Coach Smeby and a van full of female college players. If you have ever tried to take off your pants/warm-ups with your shoes on, sometimes you are hopping around, almost tipping over, in an attempt to balance yourself and remove the unwanted clothing. My question was in jest--the player was obviously having a difficult time with her warm-ups--it was comical to me. I was sitting on a bench one court away at the time. "Do you need some help with those?" We lost the match and headed home. The following week after practice, I was walking back to the office with the head coach and she said "Ok, I know you're not going to want to hear this--you'll probably just want to quit". "Ok, try me." She went on to say that my comment about asking if the player needed help taking off her warm-ups was taken in the wrong way. I was asked to write a statement about what happened. I was "invited" to attend a meeting with the Athletic Director for the college and the head coach. I was told to have no further contact with that player unless it related directly to the coaching of tennis ("follow through", "nice shot", etc.). I didn't quit. I wasn't fired. And, thankfully, a year or so after that, I had an opportunity to personally apologize to the player when I saw her at a tennis tournament.
Not the two proudest moments of my life, the ones I chronicled above. And, truth be told, yes--there are others! I am thankful for two things: one, that I am not "famous", and the press has not yet dispatched news vans to my home or place of employment, awaiting my every misstep and plastering the results all over the front page; and two, that I have friends and family that know me for more than my most famous mistakes, and love me in spite of them. When I am laid to rest, my hope would be that I would be remembered for more than just the negative things. It is human nature to think about, talk about, dwell on the negative things in life--whether it is about ourselves or other people.
This past week has been a difficult week for Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno (it is a given that the child abuse victims have had a much more difficult time--perhaps I will write a post about them one day; in the meantime, I will stay focused on Coach Paterno). Here is an 84-year-old man who, about a decade ago, made a fateful decision to not notify police, but instead the Penn State Athletic Director after being given information (it is till unclear as to exactly what information he was given) about an alleged child abuse incident. A major lapse in judgement? Yes, I believe the only thing to do is remove him from his coaching position. Done. At the same time, are we to completely discount the entire body of this man's life? That he has been one of the greatest college football coaches ever is a given. Far beyond "win-loss" records, however, people (current and former players, coaching staff, etc) are coming out of the woodwork saying things like "this man, over the decades, has been like a father figure to me--his influence has gone far beyond the football field in my life". I experienced much the same thing spending four years with Coach Verdieck on the University of Redlands tennis courts. Was he a perfect man who made all the right decisions? Of course not.
Final thought: if we, as onlookers to this tragic saga, end up characterizing Joe Paterno's life using a lens that sees and remembers nothing more than his failure in properly handling this one incident, a tragedy of another type will have occurred.
