2. Alaska
Alaska is a very close memory to me
because, it was a special bonding time with my
dad. Alaska with it’s beautiful views from the
mountain to the water was a perfect place for a
time away for two people to get to spend some
time. Alaska brought some funny moments when
the street light was at a top of the hill, so when
we stopped the car started rolling down the hill.
Also at the hockey rink my dad sent me to the
beer section where an employee stopped me and
sent me back to my seat. There is some type of a
history walkway all around the city of Anchorage
where my dad and I talked about hockey and his
love of the Pittsburgh Penguins. He even taught
me some stuff that I never even knew about.
Since then, my dad and I have been best friends.
For college, I want to go to the University of
Alaska Anchorage.
3. Bad Trophies
Ever since I have started playing
sports I have received medals and bigger
trophies for accomplishments, but a lot of
the time I get a very bad trophy. Once my
team won a tournament in Hudson where
the prize was a sweater. Really, the trophy
was a sweater, in the middle of summer. I
was pretty angry about the “trophy”
because our team worked really hard to try
to win that tournament in the scorching
heat. In fact the only goal I scored that
summer was in that tournament so I was
pretty dejected. Also in an ice hockey
tournament in Waterville Valley the trophy
was a hockey puck with a design of the
tournament logo on it. That really got me
going because our team played our hearts
out with only 9 players and every one of us
played the best hockey we ever played that
year.
4. Canada
I have gone to Canada several times
but only for a few hours for each visit so I
didn’t get the whole Canadian experience. My
hopes and dreams are to some day move and
live there for the rest of my life so that I could
watch some hockey games at the some of the
greatest venues in the sport. Also I really want
to watch TSN (The Sports Network) which is
my favorite channel, but of course I can’t
watch the channel in the States. I love to play
pond hockey and some of the best places and
in Canada, where there are a whole lot of kids
go out there and have fun, but no one in the
United States could not really care about
hockey. Plus the Hockey Hall of Fame is in
Toronto and I would absolutely love to visit
that place every single day.
5. Dangles
This my favorite part about the game
seeing all of the best players absolutely undress
the defenders. My teammates and I always have
a great time trying to pull off some of the best
moves in the professional hockey leagues. I
always have a good laugh about whenever I try
to do something filthy like a Datsuyk of even a
Kyle Turris. My teammates and I know I have the
gift of hands of steel so I cant pull off anything.
Still I will always keep trying no matter what and
I will always fail at attempting these moves. I
always will look up to my teammates who have
nasty sets of hands to see if I can copy their
moves, most likely it never works out. Even when
I fail it is always still fun to at least try. But like I
say sometimes perfection makes satisfaction.
6. Elementary School
I absolutely hated elementary
school, especially Southeast, it was that terrible. The
problem was that it wasn’t an appropriate setting for
young children. See this elementary school looked like
garbage, trash all over the floor and writing all over
the walls. This type of behavior that went
undisciplined, for the most part, is probably what
carried over to what we have in this school right now.
See the elementary school we went to the only
things on the playground were a balance beam, swing
sets that went sky high, and a this type of a jungle
gym. The problems were that the balance beams
other kids were running into it which caused head
injuries, the swings and if someone decided to jump
off they would either land on the wood type chips or
on the pavement. This was not fun and which is why I
hated Southeast. Now from what I heard in the past
years there was asbestos in the kitchen. This was just
a horrible place for children to learn. The school was
also located in the projects and in the ghetto.
7. Fish
I have always been intrigued by the world
of fish since when I fast saw Finding Nemo which is
my second favorite Disney movie and one of the
only two that I would actually watch. When I was
younger I wanted a fish so a badly that I would draw
pictures of what color and size that I could possibly
want . Finally, the day came when I got my first pet
, a fish, sadly I had no idea he was sick and only
lasted about 24 hours. I was very shocked and
depressed, but only for 24 hours. This fish taught me
a pretty good lesson to get over things quickly or the
memories will haunt forever. Then another day about
like 6 months later I got another fish that looked
exactly like the first one, this one died because he
was left next to a window for two weeks while my
family was on vacation. I was disappointed that the
fish died, but for the most part I didn’t really care
because things come and go.
8. Games
Honestly besides hockey which is the sport I
absolutely love, I rarely go outside. My favorite outdoor
activity as a you child was running around in the
driveway. I felt that I would become faster and build more
leg strength. The effect of running around racing in the
driveway has made myself faster at running, but now the
long term affect is myself having terrible knees.
Whenever I did go outside though, I always got hurt so
then, I stopped playing games due to my concern of
safety. Now I only play video games and the only one I
play is NHL2K11. I have mixed feeling about this
game, one is that I love because it is the only game I
enjoy playing, but I hate it because there is a lot of things
you can’t do compared to the EA Sports NHL series. There
are a lot of professional hockey players that I have met in
person in this video game which is really cool so I play as
them a lot of the times. Someday in the future I would
hope to see myself in of the NHL video games.
9. Hockey
Hockey is my passion, it is my way of life
through the good times and the bad times. Hockey
my most favorite sport of all time. I just don’t watch
hockey, I play it, I live it, I experience hockey first
hand. There have been ugly moments in my six year
career, such as being sent on an ambulance twice for
head related injuries , including one just last
year, but I fought through, forgot about the past and
moved on to one of the best seasons I ever played.
The position I play is defense which I love because I
don’t have to do a lot besides defend our zone.
Whenever I watch a professional hockey game it is
usually on the TV but I still feel the excitement as if I
was sitting in the crowd. I have been to a few hockey
games in person too, and my favorite “ponds” are
the Fleet Center (now the TD Garden) and Madison
Square Garden in New York, New York. I love the
Fleet Center because it is close to home, but MSG
because it is just the atmosphere of being in that
building and all the famous events that happened in
there. Also I attended the first ever Red Hot Hockey
game ever at MSG, it is a moment I will never forget.
10. iPhone 4
I can’t go anywhere without my
iPhone, fourth generation to be exact, it is my
other way of life. I use my phone to keep up on
social media to see what events have a very
important effect on my life. The apps that I use
the most are probably Twitter, Facebook, and
TSN. I use the TSN app to check up on the NHL
updates. Also, I first learned that the lockout
was over on my phone so I was thankful I had
my phone handy. Some other times, I use my
phone to spam some of my contacts and other
times I am usually the one who receives the
“spamming” , like one time I received 65 text
messages in the span of 3 minutes from three of
my friends. Even though it may be irritating to
others, I enjoyed it. Through my iPhone and my
other friends’ phones we can always keep in
touch.
11. June
June is my favorite month of the year
because of the warm weather and not the hot
temperatures like July. In the month of June I
usually go outside in the nice weather to play
hockey in my driveway to practice my sub-par
shooting skills. In the process of shooting my
hockey balls I have broken two hockey
sticks, but those were only valued at $15 to $20
each. Usually in June, my dad would take me
across the country to watch some baseball
games of various teams. We would call this
going to different places for no specific reasons
at all. One of my favorite moments was when
we went to Tropicana Field in the Tampa Bay
area to see a Tampa Bay Rays game. To get
there we drove through the Everglades, which
was pretty cool to see the swampy areas and
the amounts of different wildlife in that area.
12. Keys
I will always for the rest of my life forget
about where I put any type of keys. One time I
completely forgot where I put my house key, but I
ended up finding them on the kitchen table. I
ended up getting yelled at by my mother for not
knowing where I put my house key. Anyway, my
house key is brown with M&M’s on it, I picked it
out and I can honestly say the key is pretty weird.
Now I don’t really like car keys because well, I have
an inability to use them. Like one time instead of
turning the engine completely off I turned it
completely on so that the engine is set up so you
can start driving. Also, another time, my mom told
me to take the key out of the ignition switch. So I
sat there for at least ten minutes trying to take a
key out. I finally realized that to take the key out
you have to push the key in and then yank it out.
13. Lead
When was at least two years old, I
somehow contracted lead poisoning. My
house was filled with lead and I then
contracted lead poisoning. My parents then
took me to the Emergency Room at
Leominster Hospital, very concerned about
my health. When I had lead poisoning I was 3
years old at the time so I could have had
problems with my brain developing. Since
then, my mom thought that I would have
Autism. I am not sure but this could have
affected my problems with speech.
14. Miracle
This is my favorite movie of all time. I
love watching this movie over and over again
because of the story that the American hockey
team went through to get there. I even cried
during some parts, it is that heartwarming. The
movie Miracle taught me that you can go against
all odds and all you need it heart and soul to get
through your problems like exactly what happened
when Team USA beat the Soviets. This happened
to my hockey team up in Waterville, were our
team only had 9 players to the other teams’ who
had at least 15 players each. Our team was all
heart and soul during those 4 days in February
which happened in almost the exact same time
period as the Miracle on Ice took place. What is
special too is that I have met some of the players
that were on the United States team during the
Miracle on Ice at Madison Square Garden. They
even signed my Boston University jersey.
15. Newspaper
I don’t really like reading the
newspaper because of the bogus that some of
the writers and editors put on the paper. I
don’t find most thing on the newspaper true at
all. The only reasons that I read the newspaper
are for the sports section and to see if my
hockey team is it. My team has been featured
twice in the newspaper one was in 2007 when
we won the Tournament in the Woods in
Groton and the second time when in 2011
when our team won in Waterville Valley. But of
course the people who wrote the paper got
one of the teams we beat wrong. Instead of
Norwood, the authors wrote Newton. I found
this mistake terrible. This other time in first
grade some of my classmates and I were in the
newspaper about school lunches and the
healthiness of them.
16. October
Even though my birthday is in
October, I hate this month for a couple
reasons but the biggest is Halloween. I
stopped going out to get candy after third
grade because I was very bored. There
was nothing to do really so, I started
staying home. Another reason of why I
don’t like October is cleaning the leaves in
the driveway, it takes forever to get it
done and I would rather sit on the couch
doing absolutely nothing. There is one
upside to the month of October
though, the NHL regular season usually
starts in the month of October. Well
unless there is a lockout, like this year. If
there is any lockout, then I hate October
completely.
17. People
There are some people in the world
that I am okay with, like my very best friends
and my hockey teammates, see I can deal with
them. But there are some people that I don’t
like (if you haven’t noticed yet I don’t like a lot
of things). The people that I can’t stand are the
people who think that they are all cool and
such, specifically the people who think they
have “swag.” I “met” this person once in
Baltimore in a not so friendly way. See it was
batting practice in the Orioles Park at Camden
Yards and there was a ball coming towards
where I was . As I was about to try to catch
it, this guy runs me over and I ended up falling
on to the brick ground. He didn’t even stop to
apologize and all the people around the scene
did nothing.
18. Quincy Market
Quincy Market is where my cousin
works so my family goes down there every once in
a while to go see her. Even though there is a lot to
do there with all the shops and restaurants there I
can’t really connect to. I never go into most of the
stores because I find no interest in most of those
stores. The only store that I go into is
Abercrombie, because that is the store of where
my cousin works. But in the store even though I
get everything at 40% off I do not buy anything
because nothing appeals to me. I will say
though, some of the atmosphere on the outside is
beautiful. I also like going inside the main Quincy
Market building because of all the food they have
to offer there. My favorite part is when we leave
because it is boring to walk around the same place
for a couple of hours.
19. Real Estate
I am really intrigued by real estate
because my ice hockey coach Robert “Dino”
Denault is a real estate agent for Century 21. You
might see his signs all over the area. Whenever I
get free time during practices I always ask him
how the house buying market is going and how
his business is doing. He would always respond as
good or ok, but when I asked him recently he said
that the housing market was getting better and
that his real estate business was doing very
good, so I was glad to hear that. He was actually
trying to sell a house on my street, which he
eventually did. So I sent my coach a
congratulations message about his recent house
selling. I also said that I would miss seeing his sign
every time that I went by that house.
20. Street
My street is probably the weirdest
street in the city of Leominster, I would say
this just because of the wide range of
personalities. There are people on my street
who are very nice and kind and of course are
always the mean and grouchy neighbors.
But, on my street there once was a drug
dealer who lived in a house across the street
from mine. I did not know about this until I
was told that he got caught by the police.
Also on my street, basically, all the houses are
the color white. Then there is my house, the
one that is completely different. My house
has a yellow paint color on the outside, and a
very vibrant pink paint color. Around my
street, there are a bunch of other streets
similar to mine all in numerical order.
21. Tyler
I was born into this world on
October 18, 1998 at the UMass Memorial
Hospital in Leominster, Massachusetts. My
childhood was not the greatest because I
had lead poisoning, ran into a copy
machine, and fell down an escalator while
holding building blocks. I use social media
for the most of my time out of school. I
mostly tweet on Twitter, but I rarely use my
Facebook because it gets myself bored real
easily. I am a very avid fan of the Boston
University Terriers men’s ice hockey team.
My dad and I go to almost every single one
of their home games and some of the road
games depending on where the team is
playing. I love Tim Hortons, which is a quick
service restaurant chain. I have only been to
one in Buffalo when I was six or seven years
old and I would love to go to another again.
22. Uwe Krupp
Uwe Krupp is probably one of the
most inspiring hockey stories ever in the
history of the game. He was injured for most
of the 1995-1996 NHL season and came
back in the Stanley Cup playoffs. In the
Stanley Cup finals, he scored the game
winning goal in the third overtime to let the
Colorado Avalanche win their first Stanley
Cup in franchise history. His story really
inspired me to comeback after a near
concussion, after feeling awful for two
weeks, I returned to play in the state
championships. Also after receiving an illegal
hit from behind and being given a head
injury and a neck strain, I remembered
Uwe’s journey and came back after only one
week after being injured. When I came back
though my teammates welcomed me back
by saying “I thought you were dead.”
23. Vegetables
When I was younger I used to
love eating vegetables in those Gerber
jars that were mashed up. I thought that
those things were fun to eat as a young
child. Now, I don’t eat vegetables all that
often mainly because there are almost
none of any type of vegetable in my
house. Also combined with the fact that I
don’t like to eat many types. The only
ones that I like are corn, broccoli, and
carrots. For some reason, whenever I do
eat any vegetable I end up nearly choking.
Also going back to that Gerber thing, I
really want to try one of those ravioli
dishes with the spinach inside.
24. World Juniors
I always like to watch the Under
20 international teams play in the last week
of December and the first week of January.
Like the past tournament that was in
Ufa, Russia, most games started at 3:00 in
the morning, so I woke up at that time
because I dedicated myself to watching the
games. Someday I wish to play in the World
Juniors for the United States of America and
win the gold medal and represent my
country. I watch the World Junior
Championships to see the future talents of
tomorrow’s hockey game. Even during to
school days after vacation was over I still
woke up at 4am in the morning to watch the
games. I am very proud to say that I
witnessed the game the United States Under
20 hockey team won the gold medal in the
2012-13 World Junior Championship.
25. X-Ray
I have had several X-Ray
operations before but the most notable that
I can specifically remember are when I had
my head related injuries. The first time I had
my head checked was in 2009 when I was
cross checked to the head. The doctor that
treated me in the emergency room said that
I couldn’t play for two weeks because of a
head injury. After that when, I went back to
school the next day I felt very dizzy. My
second head injury happened in a rink in
Tewksbury, when a player from Cape Ann hit
me from behind into the boards with about
1 minute left in the game. I was carried off in
an ambulance and when I got to the hospital
This is the hospital I went to
the X-Ray results came back with me having
when I had my second head
a head injury and a neck strain.
injury.
26. #YOLO
YOLO, if you haven’t heard it
means You Only Live Once. This is by far
the worst saying I have ever heard. But, if
you ever see me with some of my friends
prancing around in the street I will always
scream YOLO at the top of my lungs. I say
this phase every time I want to be
sarcastic. What I mean by sarcastic I mean
act like the cool kids who have all the
“swag.” My friends and I always talk about
how stupid this phrase is by mocking it like
saying “I didn’t use safety scissors! YOLO!”
27. Zetterberg
Henrik Zetterberg is probably
one of my favorite hockey players that ate
currently playing right now. He is the
captain of the Detroit Red Wings which is
one of my favorite professional hockey
teams, even though my dad hates them.
The reason why I like him is because he is
a great player, despite being drafted in
the in the seventh round of the NHL Entry
Draft. Also, because of his relatively small
stature compared to other players like
Zdeno Chara who is 6 foot 9 inches. The
reason I look up to Henrik Zetterberg is
because I am one of the smallest players
in my league.