Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. All of us are familiar with this nursery rhyme which we have sung and heard many times. What lesson does this rhyme teach us? Yes, it teaches us to be punctual in our daily life.
Here is one incident which I want to share with you all. Being a 21st-century human, even I was affected by late sleeping and late rising styles. I used to watch movies till late at night and in the morning when my mother used to wake me, I would refuse to get up. Still, my mother took great pains to wake me up and send me to school without fail.
Once it happened that my grandmother fell ill in the village. She was very serious and admitted to a nearby nursing home. I was left alone at home. I had to participate in an Inter-School Championship in Taekwando for the black belt the next morning in Agra College. My match was decided at 7:30 am and I had to report to my coach at 6:30 a.m.
I was watching some interesting English movies on Tata Sky. I was awake till 12:30 in the night. Then I don’t know when I fell asleep with the television on. I was lying on the sofa and fell fast asleep. I even forgot to set an alarm for the morning. I was dreaming of winning the championship and getting a black belt.
Suddenly in the dream, I saw myself blowing my leg in the air and hitting my rival. And suddenly my leg hit the showpiece on the side table and, there was a big bang on the floor. That sound woke me. Alas! then I realized that I had broken a very expensive imported showpiece, which my mother loved very dearly.
I was so scared and started apologizing, “Mom, I am very sorry. I broke your favourite showpiece. Mom I didn’t mean to do it intentionally”. But my mom didn’t turn up on all these scenes. To my surprise, when I saw the time on the wall clock it was 9 a.m.
Oh my god, it gave me a heart attack. I immediately rushed to the washroom and got ready within 10 minutes. But it was of no use. When I rushed to the competition spot, the trophy and black belt had already been given to the other player because I didn’t turn up on time.
I went and apologized to the authorities and my coach. But it was all in vain. The coach started yelling at me for spoiling the reputation of school. All efforts of the coach and myself went waste. This taught me the lesson of punctuality thereafter. Now, I am a very responsible, serious and punctual person.
