Take It From Me. Drugs Are A Really Bad Idea
By Sean Pitts |
Murray, Utah - I never thought it would happen to me. I thought I was
safe from drugs because I'm not part of "the crowd."
But I was wrong, and that's what I'm writing to tell you.
My sport is golf. Sure, I'm no Nancy Lopez, but my dad and his
friends always took me out on the course - I'd ride on the back
bumper of the golf cart and keep score, even keeping track of
their putts with little numbers I'd circle next to the overall
score for each hole. For my eighth-grade graduation, Dad took
me to Wal-Mart and we came home with a full set of official
Jim Thorpe men's golf clubs. (That's not Jim Thorpe the Olympic
athlete, it's Jim Thorpe the African-American golfer who had
three PGA tour victories in 1985 and is currently playing on
the Champions Tour.) We figured out pretty quick that I could
hit the ball a long ways - even if I did have a BIG slice!
I
always enjoyed playing with my dad, but after a couple of years
I felt bad that, because my mom home-schools my little sister
and me, I wasn't able to play competitively at the high school
level. Well, Mom did some asking around and pretty soon we had
a six-man team of home-school guys, ready to compete with the
smaller high schools around my town. We didn't have much, but
we had spirit!
The first year was tough, I won't lie. Some
of those teams we played were from real "country club"
schools, and they weren't too nice to us. One team would insult
our mothers as we took our backswings, and another team refused
to let us play on their home course unless we were wearing shirts
with collars! (My mom had to make an emergency trip home to get
six of my dad's work shirts for us to play in.) Another time,
I was in the first foursome - two of us and two of our opponents
- and after the other guys out drove us on the first hole, they
just went ahead and kept playing. When they holed out on the 9th
hole, we were still chipping up on the 5th!
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Well,
you can probably guess that this sort of thing got real old real
fast. As we gathered for our first practice this year, our faces
were sure long. Nobody was looking forward to another year of
being laughed at. It was a weak moment, and that's when it happened.
I was standing at the ball washer with my buddy, who I won't name
here, when he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a
gum wrapper, a ticket stub from Jeepers Creepers II, and a little
white pill that he said was a steroid. He said he got it from
his brother, who works out on the free weights in their basement.
He said it would help me hit the ball farther and show those prep
school guys a thing or two. He said it wouldn't hurt me. He said
he'd already taken one. As it turned out, those were all lies.
(Except for the one about the pill being a steroid - that was
true. Actually, my mom thinks maybe it was just an aspirin, but
the point is, it was a drug, and drugs and golf don't mix.)
I
was worried, but I was kind of flying from having just slammed
a Red Bull on an empty stomach, so my judgment wasn't what it
should have been and I took the pill. I felt strong and powerful
at first, but by the time I stepped up to the tee, I was feeling
kind of light-headed. I teed the ball up, and the cheering of
my friends was like a dull roar, like in sports movies when everything
slows down and all you hear is the breathing of the guy making
that big shot, and all the cheerleaders and everyone are jumping
around in slow motion in the background, kind of fuzzy and out
of focus. It was like that.
I pulled the club back, and I could feel the
drugs pumping through my veins. I felt like I could hit that sucker
just about to the moon. When I swung at the ball, it was like
a lightning bolt was traveling down through my Utes cap into my
skull and into my hands. I hit the ball with a loud SMACK, but
I soon saw what a big lie drugs are because I totally shanked
the shot. Instead of flying majestically down the fairway, it
flew at a very low angle over to the green on #2, which is located
next to and a little in front of the #1 tee (which is poor course
design, but never mind). There was a guy standing there waiting
for his friend to putt out, and my ball nailed him right in the
leg, just above his knee. There was this terrible thwacking sound,
and the innocent man cried out in surprise and pain. I had to
very humbly walk over and pick my ball up as he limped away with
a huge frown on his face.
But the good part is that I was one of the lucky
ones. I learned right away that drugs are a bad idea. You might
not be so lucky. Consider this my warning to you. HSP