First Quarter: What Do Emmitt Smith, Black Beauty, and To Kill a Mockingbird All Have in Common?

                                                 

-In the first semester of my sophomore year I ended up in and English class that I had no clue what to expect in. After getting the syllabus and being there for a few classes, I still had no clue what was going on. When I wrote my first assignment, the literacy autobiography, I finally began to get the gist of what direction the class was going. I wrote this on my true feelings about literature and reading and how they have influenced my life. Throughout the story, I explain the various books that I have read throughout my literate years. I started with Black Beauty then I moved on to sports books mostly reading about Emmitt Smith and Babe Ruth. When I hit high school I learned to love reading other types of novels, even classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird. My tale of literacy is one that most of us can relate to but is rarely told. Here is my literacy autobiography so buckle up.-

When I was a youngster, I despised reading, plain and simple. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was about 1998 and I was going into first grade. Being that my brother and sister were already readers by this age, I knew that my time had come. Black Beauty was the book chosen by my father, who was basically forcing it down my throat, because it was the same first book that my brother and sister had read when they were my age. The rest of the memory is hazy simply because I took no interest in it and couldn’t relate to it at all. What I do remember about this memory is that after I finished reading it, I went into my parent’s room where my father was napping and slammed the book shut as loud as I could “ I’m done! Happy now?”

Luckily when I got a little older, probably in about fourth grade, I had to do a book report on a book of my choosing. When I received this assignment, I went straight to my brother whom at the time, shared the same hatred for reading that I did and asked him what I was to do. He told me that he had the same problem when he was my age and solved it by finding a book that was actually interesting. I was puzzled by this oxymoronic statement, “a book can actually be interesting?” I thought to my self. But then he handed it to me, the first book I “actually” ever read, On the Field With Emmitt Smith, by Matt Christopher. The book was about 120 pages long and I read it in about two hours. Being the Cowboys fan that I was, and still am, this book spoke volumes to me. Emmitt Smith is the all time leading rusher in the history of the NFL and at the time I tried to listen to every single thing that he said so I could become more like him. I think that by reading a book by my idol really helped me become the avid reader that I am today. For once I actually felt that feeling that people always talked about when they “just couldn’t put it down.” Lets just say that I easily got an “A” on the book report but it wasn’t because I studied the book extremely hard or anything, it was just because I shared an interest in what it had to offer. I love sports, I love football, and most of all, I love Emmitt Smith.

Over the next few years I used that book for almost every book report I was assigned. About the time I hit eighth grade, it wasn’t acceptable to use it any more because of its lowly third grade reading level. Although I was reluctant to, I branched out to different books but still all sports books. Once I hit tenth grade I had to stop screwing around and I had to start actually paying attention in school, English in particular. My teacher’s name was Mr. St. John, and he showed me how to find an interest in books by not just reading the book, but reading it like it was a movie. He told me to read the book and analyze every word that the author says. For example, in To Kill a Mockingbird, don’t just read the book and see a white man defending a black man accused of rape. Look at what it meant for Atticus Finch, a well-respected man in the racist south, go to bat for a lowly black man. Once I started looking at books more in depth, I learned to love books.

Today I consider myself a pretty well read man. Admittedly I still read mostly sports books because it is my first love, however instead of only considering sports books, I will give almost any type of literature from Shakespeare, to Buster Olney, to Tolstoy a chance. I feel that I have come a long way from my Black Beauty days, and that I have matured a ton since I have discovered On the Field With Emmitt Smith, but with the help of my tenth grade English teacher I have realized that I am still developing as a reader. There is so much more literature out in the world that I have yet to uncover, that will further develop me into a more educated and more diverse person. Throughout my years as a reader I have come a long way and have realized that literature isn’t just words on a page, its much more than that.