Final Draft

I flew through our house at incredible speed, grasping on to every pivot point I could to gain traction and speed in order to get to the kitchen table faster. There my mother cooked our favorite banana pancakes. Wes, my brother, and I especially liked banana pancakes because it meant there was both good food and a show. When banana pancakes were served, my mom would read chapters of our favorite book The Adventures of Captain Underpants.

Captain Underpants engaged my young mind because the story resonates around two main characters that write and sell comic books on the playground. I was especially interested in this plot design because I myself was interested in entrepreneurship from a young age and being a class clown. The main characters in Captain Underpants became my idols. George and Herold would always pull pranks at school, many of which I would emulate. After getting in trouble with the principle at school my mom stopped reading Captain Underpants at breakfast because it was determined my poor behavior was stemming from that particular reading. I believe that a lot of my young ideology was absorbed from my reading, much like how Murray believes writing changes ones ideology. “We become what we write. That is one of the great magics of writing.” (Murray 71). I was a child that liked what I couldn’t have and after several failed attempts at getting my mother to read more Adventures of Captain Underpants to me, I decided I would need to find the books and read them myself.

I never actively sought out literature until this moment. Never had I had the desire to read something so intensely that I was willing to go to a library and search for a book. I was fortunate enough to go to a middle school with a well stocked library. Most of my friends and fellow classmates saw this library as a muggy old ridden building guarded by a grey hair widow only concerned with late fees. To me, this library was a portal. It was an escape from what I thought was the real world and allowed me to become immersed in adventure. I am surprised to say that my first strive for literacy began because literacy was taken away from me. I wanted to read what I was not allowed to read simply because I fell in love with the story. Granted the story made me behave in a manner that adults found annoying but that was part of the reason I wanted to read it so bad, to be rebellious.

I grew up in a family that encouraged education. My mother being a lawyer and my father being an entrepreneur, reading and writing were considered critical parts of our child development. My brother and I always had access to books and technology. “Our house was filled with books. They were stacked in crazy piles in the bathroom, bedrooms, and living room.” (Alexie 12). I can recall my dads desk being piled with inspiring books I could not fully understand as a child. What I could understand was even more up lifting. My dad would say quotes to me such as, “it’s not who’s right, its whats right.” His face would glow with glee as he explained to me what these famous words meant. Seeing him so happy about a something he read made me genuinely curious about reading. “Sponsors, as I have come to think of them, are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy and gain advantage by it in some way. Just as the ages of radio and television accustom us to having programs brought to us by various commercial sponsors, it is useful to think about who or what underwrites occasions of literacy learning and use.” (Brandt 2). By Brants definition of a sponsor I can proudly say my mother, father, brother, library, and the new mysterious internet were my most influential sponsors.

My parents were the biggest sponsors of my reading and education in general. My father was always encouraging me to self educate myself and my mom was constantly introducing me to new books and magazines she thought I would find interest in. My father encouraged me to read articles on the internet, which at that time was rare because not many people thought of computers as methods of learning.
At an early age I became a skilled computer user. I knew more about the internet and how to work a computer than virtually all my peers. For this reason, the internet became my new adventure zone. I moved past captain underpants as the internet offers a seemingly unlimited amount of knowledge. Whenever something peaks my interest, the internet is my go to source for information. The Internet has become so pervasive that to be truly literate in 2015 demands some degree of technological fluency or at least familiarity. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 73% of American adults had used the Internet or e-mail as of March 2006. I got lucky in that my parents pushed me onto the internet at a young age. Im proud to say that I used the internet well before 2006 and I believe that progressed my literacy in unmeasurable ways. I will always remember the Adventures of Captain Underpants as those stories paved the way for me to learn from my reading. My father is the reason I became so interested in computers. Being in the technology industry himself, he was a big believer that computers were no doubt going to be a huge part of our adult lives. Boy was he right.

Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” College Composition and Communication. 49.2 (1998): 165-185. Jstor. Web. 29 May 2015. (Available for download through Broome library database)

Alexie, Sherman. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me.” The Most Wonderful Books: Writers on Discovering the Pleasures of Reading. Eds. Michael Dorris and Emilie Buchwald. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 1997.  Web. 29 May 2015.

Murray, Donald M.. “All Writing Is Autobiography.” College Composition and Communication. 42.1 (1991): 66-74. Jstor. Web. 29 May 2015.

Smith, Aaron. “Internet Activities.” Pew Research Center Internet Science Tech RSS. N.p., 03 Apr. 2015. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.