Accumulating literacy or give me death

While reading Brandt’s Accumulating Literacy; i can’t stop thinking of Pac Man. Enter onomatopoeia here; wonka wonka wonka….Pac Man is going down the maze of life accumulating points with every move of the toggle. wonka wonka wonka…There are walls that direct him to score but in the end it is Pac Man that gets to chose which way he goes.  Yes, there is the chance of dying, being swallowed whole by the enemy, “the organized sytem” but with skill, intellect and motivation I, Pac Man, can achive to lifes highest ability, accumulating points or for this metaphor; literacy.  This is why i have to disagree with Brandt when he says, “This is what is so politically disenfranchising about present-day illiteracy: one’s world is almost totally organized by a system in which one can have no real say “(Brandt 652). Yes, one’s world is organized by a system, but not “totally” where one can have no real say. Yes the sytstem puts up road blocks but that is life and one must find the motivation to hurdle them.

My whole life up until i was eighteen revolved around school and church (just sundays)[catholic]. My dad was the principle of the local high school and i was Mr Mulhollands son. Having two brothers ahead of me i was also know as (his) little brother. I,  for a long time was looking for my voice and i knew from an early age that reading and school wasn’t the place for me to find it (i was wrong). I couldn’t wait to get off from school and go to Holiday Market to play video games, yes Pac Man. I did  just enough to get by in school.  I am pretty sure there were opportunities for the teachers to grade me a bit harder, maybe even easier,  but i think they kind of just let me get by, after all he (i) was the principles son. My point is that i never felt a push to do better. i never felt motivation to accumulate literacy which i would find to be a key to advancement, i chose to accumulate as little as possible.  As long as i passed then i was able to play sports and that seemed to be the place for me. What a surprise i had set up for myself in the future.

I can remember there would be a reading contest; those who read the most books would accumulate a gift. Enter onomatopoeia,,,wonka wonka wonka.  I was all about reading as less a possible, i didn’t care about a prize.. I think i may have had ADD. I couldn’t keep my mind on a paragraph let alone a sentence and by the time i got to the end of the page; nothing. I accumulated no knowledge. I would go back and read it again and in the end give up.  But some how i made it through. Well until i got to college and started to feel the pressure of having to achieve, having to pick a goal and going for it. Those little cherries that would make the enemies ghosts and let me through were no where in site.  I ended up putting so much pressure on myself that i dropped out a couple of times. Talk about “piling it on”, The moral to the story is that my idea of accumulating literacy has been an internal struggle to the point that if i was suicidal, i would have killed myself more than once. Luckily there was alcohol and drugs to help me through.  I don’t mean for this blog to be a personal journal about me, but when it comes to opportunities in life i have squandered and it is many, i know how important it is to have an education.

Now that i am back for a third time. Now that i am sober, the idea of failure is beyond me. I know what i want. I know who i am. I know i want to keep accumulating literacy, knowledge, growth as an individual and most importantly positioning myself to help others like me. The only demon is the one we create. I created a big huge monster (Gruendle) that almost broke me and what i have learned the most from my travels on this earth is that i can create my own fiction.

I asked my dad about his accumulation of literacy and he told me he would read twenty books a semester. That was in between all of the bible readings in his catholic school. They didn’t have t.v. and i think he usesd reading as an blanket. He was the second youngest and his father died at a young age. I asked him about his idea of literacy now and he held up his ipad and said, enough said. I then told him he could save a hundred bucks a year by downloading the ER app and he said no one is taking my paper away from me. I feel the same way. I went to Barnes and Noble a while back and the guy at the kiosk asked me if i wanted to test drive a nook. I told him i love to hold on to a book. So i understand my dad’s perspective about holding the news paper. I guess that will be one thing i miss or one thing i am sorry the next generation wont have and that is holding on to a good book. After All a book won’t run out of battery.