“Admit it,” your teacher says. “Just say sorry and you will receive a light punishment. If you continue to deny it, things will just get worse and worse for you.”
You know you are innocent. But what will you do? Will you shrug your shoulders and accept the unjust punishment, or fight for justice until you can fight no more?
I read an interesting story about a British man who recently chose the latter option. A speed camera caught the 71 year-old Richard Keedwell driving over 35 miles per hour in a 30 miles per hour zone. So he was asked to pay a 100 Pound fine. But Richard was convinced that he hadn’t been going over the speed limit. So he hired a lawyer, and a video electronics expert to demonstrate that the speed camera was faulty. He challenged the speeding fine in court, but lost. So he appealed, but lost again. So he appealed to an even higher court, but lost yet again. The trials took around three years in total, and cost Richard about 30,000 Pounds – his son’s inheritance. He could have just shrugged his shoulders and paid the 100 Pound fine.
All I can say is that I bet Richard voted for Brexit. Sometimes you have to just give up and accept you can’t get the perfect result you think you deserve.
Someone that I admired very much when he was alive was Clement Freud, a politician, cook, and broadcaster. He was the grandson of Sigmund Freud. His brother Lucian Freud became a famous painter. The two famous brothers fell out with one another during their childhood and didn’t speak to each other for 70 years. The reason that they fell out was a race that they had. Both claimed to have won the race, and refused to back down. Despite both becoming rich and famous and respected, neither could apologise or admit that he had been wrong. They died without resolving their differences.
Even if you were the brother who had won the race, wouldn’t it have been better just to shrug your shoulders and let your selfish brother take the credit? You would lose almost nothing, but perhaps keep a brother for life.
If the referee denies your team a clear penalty, don’t take a gun onto the field to shoot him. Even though it’s painful, just shrug your shoulders at the unfairness of life. And maybe one day your luck will change, and you’ll meet the referee in a dark alley when no one else is around...
Vocabulary:
unjust – not fair or reasonable
the latter – the second of two options
faulty – not working correctly; partially broken
to appeal – not to accept the result of a trial or court case, and to ask a higher court to review the decision
an inheritance – money passed down to someone after another person’s death
Brexit – Britain’s exit from the European Union
to fall out with someone – for your relationship with someone to become bad
to back down – to give up or stop supporting an opinion, position, etc.
an alley – a very narrow passage or street
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