No one would have been the wiser, but two 11-year olds would have known the truth:
Nate started going bonkers at the other end of the ice, high-fiving and pogo-sticking. Pat was laughing. Fandemonium ensured. The crowd noise only grew louder. Somebody outside took Nick by the shoulders and said, "Your brother just won $50,000!!!"
A man from Odds On Promotions came and gave them a paper to sign and said the check would be delivered a few days after that and, wow, just, congratulations!
"Is it really ours?" the kids asked their dad.
"Guess so!" he said.
"I was going to buy a new hockey stick," Nate said. "And give some to my brother, maybe. Like, $1,000. And give some to my school. And our hockey association."
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. "What if our friends ask us about it?" Nick asked.
It was settled then. They all decided that having to lie about it just wasn't worth $50,000. "We kept thinking about signing that paper [saying Nick had made the shot]. It just felt wrong," Pat says.
That morning, he called the man in charge and told him what had really happened. Yes, his boy who had made the shot signed the back of the ticket, but he'd signed his brother's name. Wrong kid.
