Literacy Autobiography

When I was about two or three, my mom used to read to my sister and I. We would sit in the tiny room off of her bedroom and read my favorite story, “Goodnight Moon”.  My older sister and I used to argue about who got to sit on the rocking chair with mom. As my sister and I got older, and my younger brothers and sister came along, my reading time with my mom slowly vanished. It became to hard for her to raise five kids, and read to us every night. I did not mind that my mom stopped reading to me by the age of six, at that point we were all too busy for it anyway.

There has always been a bookshelf in my playroom filled with books that no one reads. The books on the shelf were books that we got from RIF (reading is fun) fairs at school and they mostly took up space. There are always magazines and newspapers lying around my house. My mom loves to read the Costal Living and Pottery Barn magazines, while my dad will occasionally read the paper. My dad is a huge wrestling fan, so during wrestling season he will turn to the sports section to fill him in on all the matches he missed. From what he reads, he makes predictions about who is going to make the state championship and what kids my brother can beat. Whenever my brother is in the paper for wrestling, my mom cuts out the articles and hangs them on the back door. That is all my family will talk about for a couple of days. I've grown up watching my grandma read the paper. To this  day, my 83-year-old grandma reads The New York Times every single day. She reads every article on every page and ALWAYS does her sudoko.

My parents were never the ones to force education on me or any of my siblings. They opted for  the "reverse physiology approach." It is not like they don't care about their kids, they wanted us to learn that if you do not do your school work then you will have to deal with the consequences. They felt that if they forced it on us, we may shy away from it. In school there was always the “good readers” that volunteered to read to the class. These students had loud, clear voices and could pronounce even the hardest words. I was never one of these students, but I always envied them. I imagined that their parents spent hours on end with them, teaching them every word in the dictionary. I was jealous of these kids because I felt that they were smarter, better.  I knew how to read, but I would get caught up in big words, and stumble because I got nervous. always saw the teachers reading emails, online articles, and even books during their free time. At a young age, it was hard for me to understand that people read for pleasure. My parents never had the time to sit down and read like that, they were always running around. 

In my middle school we were forced to read. We had this program called Accelerated Reader, AR. You would have to pick a book off of the AR list, read it, and take an online on it. Each book was worth a different number of points and you had to accumulate a certain number of points each semester. This program forced me to read, luckily I was able to chose what book it was. Yeah, it was annoying, but it made me see that reading was not too bad. I learned that I could get lost in a book, make up my own opinions about characters, and visualize what is going on in the story. For the most part, I read cheesy love stories by authors like Nicolas Sparks and Jodi Picoult. Occasionally I will try to read a mystery or horror story, but I get way to scared and have to put it down. Along with my new knowledge about the fun in reading, I learned that I like to write. 

            I think that writing is a great way to express your feelings and say things that you cannot necessarily say. Sometimes I would write in a journal just so I could reflect back on my day. What I wrote was not for others to see, it was personal. Over the last decade, the way in which people express themselves through writing has changed. Now kids use Twitter and Facebook to express themselves. I have a Twitter account, but my tweets are pointless. I use twitter to keep up with my friends and to follow celebrities, not as a diary. I get annoyed when I scroll through my timeline and see people giving an update on their personal life. Don't they realize that no one cares? I feel bad for the younger generations because reading and writing will not be as popular as it used to be. I can only imagine how people will express themselves in 30 years. Only time will tell.