Michael Vick: What makes him tick?



Photo by Cartouche

There’s an old saying:  Don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes.  The shoes that Michael Vick wore as a child were probably far from shiny new.

Vick was one of four children born to unmarried teenaged parents. His mother and father worked long hard hours just to keep the family afloat.  They lived in public housing near which drug deals, drive-by shootings, and other abusive events were commonplace.  Vick told the 2001 Newport Daily Press this about his childhood:  I would go fishing even if the fish weren’t biting, just to get away from the violence and stress of daily life in the projects.

Football was another saving grace.  His father - known for his own prowess on the field - began teaching his son how to play when Vick was only three.  Vick also began playing sports at a local Boys and Girls Club.  These uplifting influences helped him tremendously.  In 2001, Vick said this to Sporting News magazine:  Sports kept me off the streets…  It kept me from getting into what was going on, the bad stuff.

It seems that the struggle between good and evil was prominent for Vick even back then - and that much of the time he chose the good, against some pretty tough odds.  It seems that he is now still doing just that.

After succumbing to the likely influence of his violent youthful circumstances, Vick paid dearly for this lapse.

He served time in federal prison, and lost millions of dollars in advertising revenue.  Did he pay as dearly

as those that he cruelly abused?  He did not.  However, is “an eye for an eye” the best form of justice – or does “it make the whole world blind” as Gandhi mercifully believed…

It seems that Vick is once again on the good side of this all-too-human struggle.  To outright condemn him

is to outright condemn ourselves.  None of us truly know what we would be like if we trudged the miles he did  in his long-ago shoes…

Resources

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/542514-mike-vick-a-defense-why-we-should-forgive-him

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Vick#cite_note-Puzzling-7

Copyright December 19, 2010 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved