Situational Ethics

By Jerry Mack Grubbs

On November 28, 2003, the day after Thanksgiving, I boarded a plane for Columbia, South Carolina. I was on my way to attend a memorial service. I had a forty-five minute layover in Atlanta, Georgia. I overheard a man pleading for help while I was in the restroom of the Atlanta Airport; I came around the corner of the restroom partition to get a better view of the problem. The man asking for help informed me that he had the head of a tick imbedded in his groin area. He was fearful of contracting Lime's Disease before he could get to his doctor to have the tick's head removed. He could not see to do the task himself because of where it was located. I couldn't understand what he was so concerned about but it wasn't my groin or my tick. It is easy to disassociate yourself when the problem belongs to someone else.

I knelt down to see if I could help. It is funny now as I think back and try to remember what the two of us must have looked like: him with his pants down to his knees and me kneeling in front of him trying to find the head of that tick. It was difficult to extract the head of the tick with no sharp tool or knife to work with. The airline industry was not allowing any sharp objects on board the aircraft since the 911 attack. He survived my probing and gouging, pulled up his pants and went on his way to catch his connecting flight and I resumed my journey to Columbia. I chuckled to myself as I thought of another encounter I had with ticks long ago.

Years ago my brother Bill, my cousin Lana, and I were down in the west pasture of Granny's home playing along the creek bank. We realized we were covered in tiny creatures crawling all over us. We would later discover that those little creatures were sand ticks. We ran to the house to get help from Granny. She took us into the garage, made us remove all our clothes, and then she bathed us all over in gasoline. It burned like the dickens. I'm sure you know what "the dickens" means.

This was my earliest recollection of what I would later come to recognize as "situational ethics." Just a few weeks prior to this experience, Bill, Lana and I had received the "big lecture" for going skinny-dipping in the creek. Mother said we were too old to be taking our clothes off in front of members of the opposite sex. I was scratching my head and thinking about what mom had said in that lecture and there we were bare naked in front of Lana again. I guess it was okay to take our clothes off in front of Lana if an adult told us to but it wasn't okay if we made our own decision to remove our clothes. Adults must have a tough job keeping all these rules straight: the when you can and when you can't of life.

Well, I got the head of that tick out of the man's groin in the Atlanta Airport restroom and I finally figured out it is okay to take your clothes of in mixed company if you are covered in ticks. These are my tick stories and I'm sticking to them, much like a tick sticks to you if he is given a chance. You will have to decide what you get out of the story. My wife Kaye has a fire ant story she could share with us and she certainly came out of her clothes right there in front of mixed company.