Dr. Jedidiah's Diary Episode #42. Glorious Track Team

Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or support groups for therapy. These people he has accidentally come across were the paths through which Dr. Jedidiah could look back on his own life, being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food for thoughts in life….or a fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past.

 

Episode # 42. Glorious Track Team

It was one lazy afternoon that I came to find my old picture from the dusty piles of photos in the attic. Just like a shiny pearl holding all those days of its pain trapped in the shells, the high schooler Jedidiah in the picture was showing a sardonic smile towards the camera. Bittersweet memories came rushing through my mind, leaving me sit still for hours in the attic until the moonlight started to blanket my lonely heart.

 

My highschool days could be summed up in three words: GLORIOUS TRACK TEAM. Though it called for daily arduous trainings and strong self-discipline to curb a healthy young guy’s constant appetites to be a nimble runner, I kind of enjoyed the sense of fulfillment and fully appreciated the weekends’ feast for my track-and-field team provided by generous parents. My big-eating friends and I must have been viewed as the most esurient runners in the whole world. The weekend repast for our track team seemed like the only gift from God after the weekdays’ grueling trainings to hone all possible skills out there to become the fastest runner in the regional and state-level competitions. Our track team coach Ted always said ‘You guys promise me to do your very best. Just remember one thing. Leave no stone unturned to be the best runner.’ If my friends in the varsity track team and I had understood what he really meant to say by that, things would have been way different. No one would have stepped into the bad side of their career and their lives. Coach Ted himself and a couple of front runners in our team had always shown incredible stamina and comfortable lead in most of the harsh trainings and competitions as well. Our school’s and parents’ strong belief in the runners’ capability as a die-hard track and field team had never been doubted until my close buddy Toby said something weird to me one day. Oftentimes, truth hurts when revealed. When not revealed, truth can be disguised and preserved as peace at least on the surface.

 

For months and months, Toby and I were struggling to pretend nothing was wrong with out team and coach Ted. As coach Ted pushes all the runners to the limit in the name of winning the state level championship, the conflicts inside of me and Toby were on the rise. Tossing and turning with so many thoughts on my mind every night, I reached the point of brain fried. Toby and I were just high school kids, and it felt very challenging and dreadful to make up our mind and spill the beans. Coach Ted was secretly providing himself and his top tier runners in our team with some banned substances for the purpose of boosting performance. Toby was the first to learn about coach Ted’s possession of prohibited drug along with asthma and thyroid medication in his gym bag. Then I became the second to know about the dark secret. Now that we realized the truth, all the past amazing records and the shiny PRs of the front runners could be easily explained.

 

Toby and I shared the information with our school and the regional ADA in the end. Coach Ted resigned that year. As whistleblowers, Toby and I felt somewhat disloyal to our precious track and field team as a whole, but I still have no regret for what we did. We did the right thing not to reveal the coach’s wrong doing but rather to help keep our team clean and just. Although both Toby and I left our varsity track team that year, our love for running, clean and sound running still goes on.

 

The old picture of me with my high school track and field team has found its peaceful place in a nice wooden picture frame on which three words are engraved. GLORIOUS TRACK TEAM. My disdainful smile in the old photo looks a bit heroic to my eyes today.

 

 

 

Expressions 

    1.  sardonic: cynical/ grimly mocking

 

    2.  esurient: extremely hungry/ greedy/

 

    3.  repast: a meal

 

    4.  to hone …: to refine/ to sharpen/to perfect something over a period of time

 

    5.  Leave no stones unturned.: to try every single possible action in order to achieve something

 

    6.  brain fried: mentally exhausted/ burnt out

 

    7.  to spill the beans: to tell secret information

 

    8.  ADA: anti doping association

 

    9.  whistleblower: someone who spill the truth (even at the risk of being punished by the authority later on) to put a stop to bad behavior