The Selfishness of Others

Alex and Marisa attend a Physical Education for Homeschoolers class at the YMCA. It is a great class. The class meets two times a week and has about 50 minutes of physical activity and about 10 minutes of class instruction. I am not writing about this class.

This class starts at 1:30 in the gymnasium. There is open time before their class begins. Usually there is a pick-up basketball game going on. It looks to be a pretty intense game. It seems that almost every time, these 'gentlemen' will not give up the court to the children without giving the instructor a hard time. The gym schedule is posted, they know that they can have the gym until 1:30. It seems that their game is more important than the children. Today, a few of them stayed in the gym during the class, talking very loudly, complaining about their terrible predicament. Very disruptive to the class.

It really bothered me that they think that they are more entitled to the use of the gym than anyone else (we do pay an additional fee for the class and use of gym). I did fire off a letter to the director of this Y. Just to vent my frustrations more than anything else.

I suggest that the gentlemen who are complaining about being asked to leave the court, reflect on what the 'C' in YMCA stands for and to look up and read the banners hanging from the gym ceiling: Responsibility, Respect, Trustworthiness, Citizenship, Caring, and Fairness. These are the Y's Six Pillars of Character.