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I think there is a silver lining here. One would think that all the other impressionable children would have also witnessed the bench warmer. What a great opportunity for adults.
What has happened here is a more valuable lesson than playing ball. American children have learned what happens when a person does not pay their bills.
How much good the observation is to them depends on what actions and attitudes were displayed by the adults around them. If the adults acted as though it were a terrible, sad and unfair burden to bear, then the children will learn to feel that others owe them a happy life unrelated to their own effort; in which case, they will develop an innate need to be bailed out.
If the adults shrug it off, smile and promote the idea that sometimes going without is just a temporary inconvenience and there will be better days for equal effort, then the children will adopt the belief that one has to keep trying... trying in a real world where God helps them that help themselves.
Teach them to fish and they will have fish for a lifetime. What more can we give them?
And hope that someday such a well taught child will be a congressman, er congressperson.
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