Would you give it back?

[NUance]

Doing the right thing

By Rick Reilly, www.espn.com, February 22, 2012, 12:46 PM ET

 

The puck was three inches wide. The hole in the plywood was three-and-a-half inches wide. The kid and the stick were 89 feet of ice away. It was about like trying to throw a key into a keyhole from across the street. The prize was $50,000. Might as well been $1 million. So when 11-year-old Nate Smith made it, why in the world did he give the money back?

 

<snip>

 

Nick was hoping to buy his first laptop. They both needed new bikes. Their dad was thinking: "Fifty grand? Five kids, one daughter in college, one in high school? This is really going to help." But when they all got home that night, something didn't feel right. After the kids went to bed, Pat and his wife, Kim, had the same little mosquito buzzing their consciences. But why? The money would've been paid by a monstrous out-of-state insurance behemoth, since the youth hockey association had taken out a policy. Who worries about monstrous out-of-state insurance behemoths?

 

The next morning, the parents were about to tell the kids they were going to have to give the money back when the boys floored them with their own announcement. They didn't think they should take the money.

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[knapplc]

Yes, I would give it back. But then, I would have told them that I wasn't my twin brother, that he wasn't there (or whatever the deal was) in the first place. Maybe they'd have let him take the shot anyway, and maybe he'd have legitimately won it.

 

It's pretty easy to tell the truth. These guys got it right, even if it did take them a minute to get there. They're good kids, sounds like.

[NUance]

I'd like to *think* I would give it back. But I dunno. The temptation would be great to keep it. I guess I wouldn't know until I actually found myself in that situation. Especially if I knew I'd get away with it, and it would only be coming from some insurance company. I've always been perfectly honest with insurance companies, and I've gotten ripped off a couple of times--more than a couple, actually. I wouldn't feel guilty sticking it back to one of them.