Okay, I figured I had a decent chance on this one. Unlike seeking the yeti or getting along with martians, running track is something I’ve actually DONE. And I didn’t die. Not even once. So this should have been a snap.
Well, things were promising at first. More than any of the others, the decisions in this one were easy because the thing reads like a damn anti-drug pamphlet.
You know, this is a weird thought, but sometimes I wonder if anti-drug propaganda is a little ineffective because people always harp on the bad, worst-case stuff. I mean, yeah, steroids are not ultimately good for you. But when you talk about how steroids will hurt your heart and your emotions and yadda yadda, it’s really not effective on a 17 year-old kid because those bad things are so far into the future it’s like they’ll never happen. Plus, they have some positive effects that are immediate. So there you go.
Look, if this thing can shrivel your junk and 17 year-old guys are still doing it, I don’t know what to tell you. That’s pretty much the best consequence I can think of, so if that doesn’t stop them, what possibly could? Unless the legal punishment becomes a direct kick to the gentleman’s region, I don’t see anything further we can do to convince anyone.
What’s really weird about this Choose Your Own Adventure is that I was totally on the righteous path, but as far as I can tell making the decision to continue running track as opposed to taking a paid teaching job (as a high school senior, by the way) resulted in me taking drugs. The part where I took the drugs? No choice! I didn’t even get to choose about the drugs. One minute I’m making the decision to not work a boring job teaching dumb youth about whatever, the next I’ve somehow acquired steroids and injecting myself all to hell, which somehow results in fracturing my own leg.
You know, the best piece of advice came from a magical Hispanic child whose house was not wealthy but filled with warmth and laughter (yeah, I know). He told me that anyone trying to convince you to take drugs doesn’t care about you. They just want to make money or look good at their job because you can run fast.
Oh, and BY THE WAY, I guess I must have really sucked at track. Movies have led me to believe that coaches are always trying to convince players to do dumb shit to enhance their performance. Which is a little weird to me because I wouldn’t think that an asshole-ish guy who didn’t give a damn about anyone would really have much interest in coaching, but whatever.
My main problem is that I think the kids who suck, the ones who would really benefit from drugs, aren’t being offered them. That’s bullshit. I mean, here we are, talking about how Lance Armstrong may have done some space age shit to shave 1/10th of a second off his times, meanwhile I was working really hard to not get LAPPED in the 2-mile. I mean, if there’s a compelling reason to use roids as a high school athlete, let me tell you, avoiding even a sliver of the shame that comes with being that age is a damn good one.