Editor's Note: The Tank, the Cameron High School weekly schoolpaper, returns to the C-O this week.  The editors for the staff thisyear are Junior Zalak Patel and Meghan Mulcahy, who will rotateeditorials each week in this publication. 

 

I'll admit, I've held grudges on people for years before over thesmallest things. When I turned nine, my family went out to eat for mybirthday. The waitress asked how many kids and adults there were, andof course I was counted as a kid. This made me furious because Ithought I was old enough be counted as an adult. My uncle was the onewho told the waitress the number of kids and adults, so I didn't talkto him for the rest of the evening. After that day, I tried to avoidhim as much as possible, and talk to him only when I had to. We livedin different cities at the time so this wasn't extremely difficult todo, until a couple years later when we ended up moving to Cameron, thesame city he lived in. After we moved, I was at his house almost every day, and talked to him almost every day. After a few weeks, I thought about how immaturely I was acting and forgave him.

 

I think the main reason I didn't forgive him as easily as Iprobably should have was because my parents kept telling me to. I feltit was between my uncle and me, and nobody else should have interfered.It was my decision to forgive him whenever I wanted to, not anybody else's.

Looking back, I know now they were right and I was wrong, asusual, but I still think I handled the situation the right way. I thinkthis because rather than doing what my parents told me and not learninganything, I did learn from my mistake. I don't think I've held a grudgesince then, because now if I'm ever angry with someone, I try talking it out rather than ignoring them for the rest of my life.

 

To me, learning from your own mistakes rather than somebody elsetelling you what you did wrong is important. This doesn't work foreverybody and every mistake, but everyone should at least be given achance.

 

Whenever my friends or my sister and her friends get into anargument, I try to step back and let them work it out on their own asmuch as possible. Taking sides is also automatically guarantees you'll be involved, so I try not to do that either. Of course, this doesn't always work out, but sometimes you just have to mind your own business.

 

One of the most recent ongoing debates has been over Michael Vick.We all know what he did, and we know what he did was wrong. There havebeen debates about whether or not he should be given a second chance,whether or not he should be forgiven, whether he should be able to playin the NFL again, whether he has been punished enough, ect. Everyonehas their own opinion about him and what he did.

 

The way I see it, he should be given a chance to learn from hismistake. If it doesn't work out and he does mess up again, then so beit, but at least we can all say we gave him another chance to redeemhimself.

 

There is a way to avoid having to prove you deserve a second chance--don'tmake the mistake in the first place. No one is perfect, but a lot ofmistakes we make are easy to dodge. Usually you know when you are doingsomething wrong because you tend to feel guilty or uncomfortable withthe situation. Next time you have this feeling, stop and think aboutwhat you're doing and whether or not you really want to continue withit, because avoiding your mistake will be a lot easier than having totry to learn from it in the future.