Wrestling With My Conscience

This kid was spitting into this bottle all period yesterday. I‘m a bit conflicted. I mean it was grossing me out, but this kid is on the wrestling team, and he needed to make weight. Do I have an issue that his extreme measures are not healthy for teens and some bad habits could be forming? Sure, I guess, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

It’s just that this kid lives for wrestling. He eats, drinks and well—spits it. He’d do anything to wrestle and that includes working hard in class. I’m not talking about just making C’s to stay eligible, or even worse, cheating to make that C. He wants to make the best grades possible, so he has a better chance of wrestling in college. He’s really hard-working. In fact he’s told me that wrestling has contributed to his work ethic. He’s that one in one hundred type I’ve talked about before. It’s just that if he doesn’t make weight, then he can’t wrestle then either, and I’d hate for him to lose his motivation.

Still, I asked him to put his Spitterade away. The kid next to him started dropping lugies onto the floor and rubbing them in with the sole of his Vans. Though I’m not sure he wasn’t doing that already.