Terri Lynch is a Chemical Engineer out of Mississippi State University. She is kind to people but never afraid to speak her mind. I met Terri at my job about 2 years ago and have enjoyed getting to know her. She is friendly, not pushy, ostensibly open-minded... basically, Terri is a really, really cool person to get to know.
I caught up with Terri recently and had a chance to sit down and record a story from her college years in Starkville, MS. The story she shared reminded me once again, sometimes you will never know what people have experienced until you ask.
Terri began, "Back when I was a sophomore in college, I had some friends that, um, they lived on campus but then they moved off campus."
"A couple of the guys were rugby players, and two of the guys weren’t. But there was four guys that always hung out together; they were always good friends. Three were white, one was black. One of the white guys and the black guy had an apartment together."
(Couldn't help it; made me think of "New Girl" with Zooey Deschanel... the situations both probably started out remarkably similarly... only Terri has red hair.)
Back to Terri: "Over a weekend… you know… you’re in college, you cut up; you goof off, you drink, whatever. So these guys were at their apartment hanging out and drinking and, for some reason, they decided it’d be funny to go throw the black guy into the pool. Because he had been out at the pool with ‘em before.
"So they threw him in, they knew he was gonna be mad, so they all high-tailed away from there!
"Well, a few minutes later, they didn’t see him back at the apartment and one was wanting to get back into the apartment and couldn’t find his keys so he said, 'Well I need to go find my keys.'
"And they didn’t understand why they couldn’t find their friend, either."
"Mmm-hmm," I said, paying close attention to what I was hearing.
"So they went back to the pool," Terri said, "and the guy was like, 'Well I musta dropped my keys in the pool; I’ll go to the pool.' Well, the pool… number one, it was at night. Number two it’s a nasty pool; they didn’t have it cleaned…."
"Ewww..." I contributed.
Terri nodded and continued. "Um… so the guy got in the pool to find his keys and…
"...he found his friend."
Wow. If you're anything like me, you felt a sinking in your heart and stomach as soon as you read that last phrase. I can only imagine how those guys must have felt. Horrible! Terrified! Undone! I have a million words to fill in that blank of possible emotions... they probably felt a thousand things at once, mostly SHOCKED! How terrible, how terrible. Oh my goodness. Oh... my... WOW.
Hearing this story for the first time, the only words my mouth found to utter were, "Oh no!"
"Yes," Terri agreed. "It was pretty horrible."
"Oh my goodness." Mentally, I was placing myself in that situation and feeling a sense of what it must have been like. It was rough.
"He drowned. But they didn’t know that he couldn’t swim. They had no idea… that he couldn’t swim. Or else they woulda never thrown him in the pool!"
Of course not, I thought.
"Okay, well, let’s see… sophomore year was… was over 20 years ago… okay… there was still a lot about racial stuff goin' on. You know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago," Terri said.
"And Mississippi…" I added. Mississippi has an ugly racial history.
Terri stated, "NAACP got involved. And they claimed it was a racial hate crime. The three guys, three white guys got arrested and were taken to jail. Two of the guys, their parents came and got ‘em outta jail. Third guy, his parents were like, 'We’re not coming down from Tennessee to bail you outta jail. You’re gonna have to find somebody down there to, to bail (you) out'".
"Mmm-hmm," I murmured. This story was one that should only happen on TV, in a melodramatic soap opera or the like. But this was, and still is, reality.
"I got the phone call." The third guy called Terri to come get him out of jail.
"So I went and got him outta jail and I’m like, if you nee… and I’m naïve, okay, and I don’t know what to do, and all I’m doin is signing something and I thought I was either gonna have to be responsible for the money or I’d have to go to jail so I threatened him…" she laughed. "I said, 'I’ma beat your tail! If you jump… you know… if you go jump bail, I will hurt you!'
"And he was a rugby guy! I didn’t care. And back then I weighed… 95 pounds? 5 foot 2, 95 pounds? I’m tellin the rugby guy, 'I will hurt you.'"
"Well," I commented, "the little ones can be the meanest sometimes…"
Terri agreed with me and continued the story. "Um, got him outta jail, they did go to trial, they got acquitted… cause it really was not… racial. They really... it was truly an accident. They couldn’t go to the funeral. You know, because the parents didn’t want them coming."
That must have hurt so badly.
"But it was… never, never take it for advantage that you think… you know if… even if somebody’s sittin' out by the pool with ya… never take it for advantage that they know how to swim."
Yes indeed.
What was meant as a joke between buddies ended up dousing the flame of a valuable human life. I feel certain none of those three guys have forgotten, or will ever forget, that night and the events that followed.
They will always remember how, that night, time paused... then slowly ground its way back to normal pace again.
The one light in this dark story... is the fact that the one guy who was so downcast... so hopeless... left alone by even his own family... had a true friend who came to his aid.
Terri concluded, "And if you’re a good friend, you call them and say, 'Hey, come bail me out.' Or even if you’re not a good friend, you call Terri." She smiled.
Who would you call? Or, better yet, who would call you if they were alone and in desperate need? I encourage everyone who reads this to think that over.
Everyone needs a friend who cares unconditionally. Who will help and not judge us, who will fill a role in our lives that we, on our own, cannot fill.
May we all be that friend to someone.
I cannot imagine. I think it is absurd to try. Unless you've been in similar shoes, I don't think anything can compare.
ReplyDeleteBut you ask two questions that apply to all of us, and one we have little power over and one we have total power over.
1. Who would you call to bail you out? At one point not that long ago, I honestly felt I had no one I could call. When your world has gone crazy, you don't know who to trust, but it is a good question because if the people you are hanging with now are not the kind who would bail you out, time to look for new friends, and you DO have power over that.
2. Who would call you? Believe it or not, this is a question I ask myself regularly and even ask the Lord. If my friends were in jail or having a bad day or worst, feeling they were done and just wanted out, would they know they can call me and I will come get them? Do they know I'd find my way to a jail, to a coffee shop, to the front door of their house even if I have to break the lock to get in? Because I would. Do I show them they are valuable enough that I would do that? How can they know if I don't show them? It's not words. It's actions. Do I live like that?