Читать книгу Becoming a Counselor - Samuel Gladding T., Samuel T. Gladding - Страница 39

In high school I was a football manager. That basically meant taking care of the team’s equipment, taping ankles before games, and cleaning up after the players went home. On Saturday mornings during the season, it meant straightening up the locker room as well as doing some of the team laundry. While we waited for the dryers to finish, my fellow managers and I would play games of touch football out on the field that had been the center of attention the night before. Sometimes we played among ourselves, all White boys from the Atlanta suburb of Decatur. At other times African American kids would join us, and prior to the integration of our high school we would have a spirited interracial game.

My favorite player on either side of the ball was a 15-year-old African American kid about my age known as “Cool Breeze.” He earned the name because of his speed. He was faster than anyone else. Whether going up the middle or around the end, we were seldom able to catch him, let alone stop him. Instead, he would dart past, and afterward we would feel the cool breeze of the air he had stirred up. In a word, he was awesome!

As great as Cool Breeze was on the field, his life and success were later not as terrific. The reason why is that he did not have choices educationally, socially, or vocationally. He was relegated to a lifestyle that restricted his movement and ambition because of segregation. What could have been never was. The mindset of the day kept people down and prevented possibilities. Whenever I think of the time, it makes me sad and mad. Life is too valuable to waste, and individuals are too important to treat like chattel. If there is one thing counseling can do and one reason I am a counselor, it is to open up possibilities for those who, because of background or circumstances, have not had opportunities. Although openings do not guarantee success, without options people almost always fail.