Sample Stories

Bad outcome:


Three teenage boys were excited to be going back to camp this summer, the same camp they have been going to for the past 4 summers.  Each year, a lot of their friends from all over the state come back to this same camp and have become good friends.  As the boys arrived, they heard the same ol', same ol' do's and don'ts of behavior while they are at camp.  They've heard it before, enough where they feel they could tell the speech themselves.  It was kinda like the safety info the flight attendants say at the beginning of a flight.  While quietly chatting amongst themselves, they failed to hear to the new information about the drought last season and warnings about the lake depth.  Camp started and was going along great.  Canoeing was scheduled for the  3rd day and they all loved Canoe Day.  The friends had a yearly contest of tipping each others canoe over.  All in a days fun.   While canoeing, a group of three boys in a canoe saw the rock they jumped off last summer and decided to do it again this summer.  Everything looked the same, no need to worry, they had plenty of water to jump in.  They yelled out to all their friends, "Hey, watch our jump off the rock, it's so cool!"  The first decision was who was going to go first.  After a few moments, Tom decided he'd go and the other two would jump in just after him and they'd be back in their canoes before the camp counselor even noticed they left their canoe.  Tom jumped, not thinking about the dangers of unknown lake water, and seemed to go into the water but not come up as quickly as he should of, the signal for the next boy to jump in.  He finally came up a few long seconds later, screaming a scream that indicated something was very wrong.  He was a great swimmer, but seemed to be struggling to keep his head above water.  What had been a depth of over 12 feet last summer, was just 8 feet this summer.  Tom jumped in feet first but his feet quickly smashed into a rock on the bottom of the lake, breaking both of his legs at the femur (thigh bone) and fracturing one hip.  The fracture at the hip caused paralysis from the waist down.  Now, at 16 years old, baseball & tennis are no longer an option in his life and he will be confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life.  Any of the three boys could have been the first to jump, it was Tom that stepped up and met an unfortunate fate that he will live with for ever.
SPLIT SECOND DECISION:     Saying to his buddies:  "He lets jump off that rock, we got away with it last year, we can do it again this year."
SECOND POOR DECISION:  Not listening to instructions from camp counselors that are put into place to keep them from danger, possibly danger that could change the course of their life.

R.M., Knoxville, TN


Good outcome:


Tia came home from school to the same lonely house she always came home to.  She loved her family and they had a great home life, but everyone always seemed so busy to all meet at home most nights of the week.  Tia got a snack and proceeded to check out her facebook account and then later got started on her homework.  She was in her first semester of her junior year in high school and was thinking she really needed to start thinking about where she might want to go to college.  Not sure where to start researching for information, she decided to wait till one of her parents got home from work to ask them.  If all else fails, she can attend the community college for now and decide later where she would like to go from there.  This scenario had been the norm now for 5 years and she had grown accustomed to it and thought it was working fine for her.
Tia went to school the next day and was invited over her friend Alicia's house to hang out and maybe even have dinner with her family.  She thought, "Well, I'm not doing anything else, might as well go.  Alicia has a really nice family." Tia went to Alicia's house after school and did in fact have dinner with her family.  The topic of conversation was potential colleges for Alicia.  They had a plan for the next 4 weekends to visit 4 different colleges and during the week, fill out the on-line applications.  Tia just listened and after 30 minutes, Tia was convinced, being a more active part of deciding which college to go to would be part of her next few weeks.  She heard a lot about two colleges from Alicia's family that really sounded good to her.  Over the course of the next few years, Tia visited those colleges, attended one that she hoped to go to and absolutely loved college life.  Tia met a lot of good friends and found the college a perfect match for her personality and knew it was a great decision because she had three other colleges to compare it to.  Tia ended up meeting her fiance at this college, and will be graduating next spring.
SPLIT SECOND DECISION:   Deciding she would accept the dinner invitation from her friend Alicia. She knew Alicia ate dinner with her family every night and Tia thought it would be nice to eat dinner with other people.
RESULT:  Tia ended up picking a college of her choosing, get in to this college and have a successful college experience not to mention met her future husband.

A.P, Concord, MA