Importance of Respect

Hockey has always been a very big part of my life, ever since I was young, it consumed most of life and was my main focus. Everyone in my family watches hockey and most of them played. I personally learned how to skate when I was only 3 years old and as soon as I touched the frozen pond for the first time I was hooked. I didn’t really care about anything else and this included school, which became a problem.

When I was younger, I grew super competitive and hating losing and being wrong. This faced as a big challenge for me in my early days of school. Day after day, I would find myself in the principle’s office on the phone, explaining to my parents why I was kicked out of class. Often times the reason for me being kicked out was due to me being disrespectful to my teacher and/or classmates.

My parents had grounded me many times and taken a lot of things away from me that I enjoyed as punishment. After this went on for a while and their wasn’t any real change in my behavior, my dad decided enough was enough. After school one day when I had got a detention my parents came into my room to tell me that they are pulling me from all hockey for the rest of the season. Up to that point in my life, this was the most devastating thing that happened to me. Following that horrible moment, my dad sat down with me and had a very long talk about respect. He made it very clear that if things didn’t change, I wouldn’t be playing hockey the next year either. This was a major wake up call to me because hockey was the number one most important thing in my life at the time and my behavior did change over time.

Although to this day that is still probably one of the saddest years of my life, it was also one of the most important lessons I’ve learned. So even though I wish I never had to go through that I am glad that I did because it has made me into a more respectful human.

“Ice hockey” by riekhavoc is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0