Connect the Dots

Because my life is ridiculously busy, and everybody I know seems to be equally busy, especially when I need something from them, this Saturday morning was my first opportunity to get just one question out of somebody for our Literacy Narrative.

Oddly enough, the person I was able to get on the phone, was my older brother Tyler.  I was trying, once again, to track down one of my parents, but apparently they are currently driving around Chico!  Hopefully they will have some time later today to come see their baby boy.  Tyler fortunately (surprisingly) awake at about 9:00 a.m.  I mentioned before how busy everybody I know well enough to feed these questions to, well, Tyler is probably the busiest.  He doesn’t work, and he doesn’t go to school, but this guy is busy making love to the world every day.  It’s a full time endeavor.

Although Tyler is only three years older than me, I thought he might have some interesting things to say about literacy, especially in comparison to me.  We have had an essentially identical upbringing, but in terms of literacy, we are polar opposites.  Although we lived in the same house with a similar network of friends and family contributing to our development, my brother has read a total of five books so far, in stark contrast to my unknowable multitude.  Where reading became a passion of mine at nine years old, my dad and I are still holding out for Tyler to develop a taste for a good book, besides the latest edition of Sports Illustrated…

Alright, I’m back at this blog after a long day.  I started at about 9:30 this morning, and now we’re looking at 11:00 at night.  That’s life.

So, back to Tyler.  I only had time to ask him half of the first question.

Try to think of your earliest memories of writing and reading.

Before I could continue with the rest of the question,

What do you remember of reading and writing before you began school?

Tyler had already started talking.

“First Grade!  You know, those letters with the dotted lines.  We would connect the dots first, then write the letters on our own right next to em.”

This answer, although clearly not what I was looking for, was interesting to me nonetheless, because I had completely forgot about this type of lesson.  After he described this little exercise the memory came back to me though.  I wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint the beginning of my writing days with that kind of accuracy and detail in a million years.

Do any of you remember learning to write that way?

Before I got off the phone I asked if he remembered anything before school.  He mentioned that our mom would sometimes try and show him how to write his name while they were coloring.  This was another pleasant memory I had suppressed which quickly and clearly returned to me.  Our name is something we all probably tried to write before anything else.  It got me thinking about how many times I’ve spelled out my name.  Another unknowable statistic.

Well, that’s my blog for the day.

I’ll probably try and do one of my folks for the actual literacy narrative, but maybe not.  Ty did a pretty good job.  And he’s a pretty interesting subject regardless of his generation.  A literacy narrative on a guy who would probably tell you he has no use for literacy or narratives.