Athletic meets aren’t usually places where you expect humor. Drama, maybe. Skills on display, definitely. But they aren’t supposed to be funny.

Anyone who has met me knows I am not an athlete. When I was a child I was always the last one picked for sports teams. (For the record, I was okay with that. I wouldn’t have picked me either.)

I have been wishing though that I had been in India last month to take part in the Delhi State Athletics Championship. I have a suspicion that, even at my age, I might have been declared the winner in whatever category I entered. Finally an athletic achievement at my advanced age, but I wasn’t there.

It isn’t that Indian athletes are out of shape. Quite the contrary. But apparently many are not adverse to bending the rules to get a competitive edge. So when track and field authorities showed up to the meet to conduct drug tests on the athletes, the effect was amusing.

Imagine an athlete reaching the finish line and not stopping, continuing to run in the hope of getting away and not having to provide a urine or blood sample.

Or the most prestigious event, the 100-metre race, where only one of the eight finalists actually showed up at the starting line. Apparently the others had all managed to injure themselves after the semi-final.

If you don’t race you don’t get tested. If you don’t get tested they can’t ban you for using performance-enhancing drugs.

According to news reports, half the athletes dropped out when National Anti-Doping Agency officials showed up at the meet. I guess the visit was unexpected.

Is there anything you would do, that you wouldn’t do now, if you thought you could get away with it? Cheat on your taxes? Rob a bank? Murder that person you have always disliked? (Or, for my Canadian readers, drink from a plastic straw?)

Without rules and restraint, our society would devolve into chaos. Human nature being what it is, it wouldn’t take long. Those who tell us people are basically good are well-meaning but don’t understand human nature.

More than a decade ago, I interviewed Dr. Robert Buckman, who had just written a book titled “Can We Be Good Without God.” Buckman’s theory was that we can. I didn’t think he managed to back up his thesis then, and I still don’t.

In the grand scheme of things, cheating at a track meet really isn’t that big a deal. People are being hurt, including those who take the sometimes dangerous performance-enhancing drugs, but the damage they do is mostly local. When it is politicians or business leaders dong the cheating, it can affect all of us.

It is though symbolic of our societies today. We need change, or, to use a more accurate word, repentance, starting at the individual level then spreading across society. Without that, the deterioration will continue.

I laughed when I first heard about what happened at the Delhi State Athletics Championship. When I thought about what the situation says about our society, I was no longer laughing.