Do you have what it takes?

Johnny Preston is a full-time traveling square dance caller. He has no home club to call for. Instead, he goes out and harvests money from other clubs that other people built. He comes into town, calls a dance, collects a handsome fee and then moves on to the next harvest point.

   

But what if a club already has a caller booked on the date when Johnny Preston wants to breeze into town and seize someone's paycheck?  Does a person who organizes, builds, finances and grows a club get to call for his own group?  Or should a rightful club owner be required to forfeit his paycheck every time Johnny Preston happens to bop into town?

  

Think about a job that you get paid to do.  What if somebody happens to travel through your town one day?  What if this traveler wants to go to your workplace and do your job and collect your paycheck for that day? What would you do? How would you feel? 

  

Fortunately, in the square dance world, respected rules already exist to cover this situation.  Following time-honored traditions, the club owner offered to share his paycheck with Johnny Preston.  In other words, instead of letting Johnny Preston come in and outright steal a paycheck from a hard-working caller and his family, the club owner offered to split that paycheck with Johnny Preston.  (This kind of offer is actually common in the square dance world.)
 

But it is completely uncommon ... in fact it's totally unheard of ... for an out-of-town caller like Johnny Preston to come in and insist on outright grabbing someone's total paycheck.  Yet that's precisely what Johnny Preston did in May 2012 ... and it's pretty much what he does every day for a living.  The club owner tried for months to work out a satisfactory compromise yet Johnny Preston insisted that he has the right to come in and strong-arm outright bald-face steal a paycheck from another caller, any time he wants to.

 
Naturally, I spoke out against such wrongdoing. This protest had nothing to do with money.  It is only about doing what's right.  Any person who builds, finances, promotes and grows a club has earned the right to call for their own club.  It was completely wrong for Johnny Preston to come in and outright steal someone's paycheck in May 2012.  I tried for months to reach a compromise.  Ultimately, crooked swindling robbers at FunDancers decided to go behind my back and collude with Johnny Preston and commit a robbery.

 
The robbers stole everything I owned.  They stole my paycheck for that day.  When I continued to protest about how wrong it all was, the swindling cheaters ran a successful smear campaign.  They stole my club. They stole thousands of dollars that the deadbeat club still owes to this day.  They stole my entire life's work.  I lost thousands of so-called "friends" (who, as it ends up, are all totally fake anyway, so it's not a big loss).

  

Although I lost, big-time, by speaking out against crime and robbery, I actually gained something of great value that money cannot buy.  I gained the honor of refusing to participate in theft. I gained the knowledge that I will not tolerate cheating swindling nasty rotten wrongdoers.  I gained the pride that comes from choosing right over wrong.

  

Do you have that same pride?  You do have a choice.  You can go dance to Johnny Preston.  If you do that, you participate in, endorse and profit from strong-arm robbery and out-right theft.  Or you can do the right thing instead.  You can refuse to participate in wrongdoing.

  

Do you have what it takes to Do The Right Thing?