Overcoming Weakness. A Reckless Decision

As a kid, the most annoying thing my parents could ever tell me was to put on my helmet. No matter where I wanted to ride my bike, even if it was across the street, I was always told to wear my helmet. At the time I didn’t want to look stupid, and different from the other kids, but little did I know, the helmet evolved into a mouth guard, and a cup, and soon knee and elbow pads. I always thought to myself that it wasn’t possible to get hurt because of all the protective gear I had to put on. I felt almost like a big roll of bubble wrap.

Every sport I played consisted of some sort of gear protecting some part on my body. For basketball it was a mouth guard and ankle braces, for baseball a helmet and a cup, for skateboarding nearly anything that covered my body, and the list went on. Obviously my parents made me wear everything for a reason, and obviously companies had a purpose behind all of it. But being the cynical kid I was, I thought it was all stupid. I thought if I was careful enough then I wouldn’t need anything to protect me. Now although I know that there was a purpose to this now, I didn’t know that years ago. I sat out multiple seasons and important games for being stubborn and not taking the necessary precautions.

When I played basketball from elementary school to middle school our team had great success. We made it to the state tournament multiple years and even took home 1st place 8th in grade. Throughout those years though, we encountered countless injuries in the seasons. It was two injuries that changed the mindset for everybody. One being when one of our teammates wasn’t wearing any ankle braces and ended up breaking his ankle. The other was when I personally was tripped and hit my chin on the ground going unconscious and ending in a concussion. Although these two injuries weren’t the end of the world, it cost both me and my teammate the whole season. If I had been wearing a mouth guard, and my teammate an ankle brace, we would’ve been able to play in State at the end of the season.

Injuries in sports today seem to be getting more and more severe, especially in high contact sports like hockey and football. No matter the protection used for players, there will always be a risk for accidents. But that doesn’t mean that people should ignore the safety precautions correlated with each sport. The protective gear will not decrease the chances of getting hurt to zero, but they will protect players from fatal injuries. From concussions, to broken bones, to stitches in my lip, I have learned my lesson. Luckily for me, none of my encounters have ended up with lifelong injuries or scars on my body, but I don’t need that to remember the stupidity of not wearing my helmet.