My superheroes, my role models

_{Photo by Suzi Kim}

Times without number I've always made it clear that if there's one person who I always try to follow in their footsteps because of how much of a role model this person is, it's my dad. And if I have to go further to include one more person, it definitely would be my mom. So when I saw today's contest topic from the Hive Learners community, I knew this was going to be a walk in the park for me.

Unfortunately, I've written so much about the things that I've learnt from my parents during the years that there really isn't much to write about anymore. And that is why instead of trying to think too deep about the question, I've decided to go with the first few things that popped up in my mind the moment I read the contest description.

The first thing I had written down after reading the contest description was self-respect and if I didn't know the importance of that, something happened many years ago that made me understand the importance of self-respect.

Some years ago while we still lived at the ghetto. We had this next door neighbour who hated us for completely no reason. We were cool one minute and then all of a sudden he was accusing us of theft, calling the cops on us and trying various ways tarnish our image to make us look like the bad guys.

But after all of his tactics failed, he had decided to go to the houses of various important people in the area to tell them lies about my dad. He had said all sort of things to this people, things that clearly were lies contorted by him to make my dad look like a terrible person.

But you see, instead of these people going ahead to act on the things this man had told them about my dad, they had approached my dad and told him about the things they had heard because according to them, they have always known him to be a well respectable man and were shocked to hear someone else say all manner of bad things about him. My dad ended up explaining the whole situation to them and that was when they all realized why that man had said those things.

He had refused to tell us what the neighbour told those men about him but he had told us that the only reason those men told him what they heard was because he always respected himself and made them see even from a distance what type of man he is, a straightforward God-fearing man. And that was where I first knew that although this generation might claim to not care about what people think about them, things like this becomes important when you have people going around trying to spoil your name.

If you've always lived a decent and honest life, then those people who are suppose to take those bad information and act on it will be the ones defending you because they know you're a good person and any bad thing being said about you is nothing but lies.

As for my mom, she showed what a good woman should be like. I have three brothers and no sisters so my mom was basically the only female in my life and I'm proud to say she was the best one. I remember how she would always tell us that where ever her husband stands, is where she stands.. Almost like she and my dad were in a gang, while myself and my brothers where in a different gang and both gangs were opps.

Thinking about it all now brings smiles to my face.

My one prayer is that hopefully when I do have kids, they look up to me the same way I look up to my parents and that I become a good example to them because my parents were definitely good examples to me. They were so good that most of the things I find myself doing today are based on the lessons they taught me. So yeah, there you have it.