Nick Balcer
English 151
September 9th, 2018
Dr. Licastro
As a kid from a family of five, three brothers and one sister, also being the youngest finding time to read and write was a bit of a challenge. My family was not the normal family, none of my siblings are my real siblings, only half. Till I was about three I was on my own with toy phones and leapfrog, but also there were many times I would be read to before going to sleep. My favorite book was “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” by Dr. Suess. As I got older books started to get harder and harder as the years went on. Started reading books like “Captain Under” all the way to “To Kill A Mockingbird”. Reading was a challenge for me, but with the help of parents and grandparents it soon became a breeze.
My toy phone I used all the time, normally from morning to night. I would carry it around everywhere with me, you would never see me without it. This toy phone was blue, with squishy buttons. It was like a normal phone but you could not make any real calls or text messages. I would pretend that I could and would be on important business calls or pretend talk to my friends on it. I would also pretend to text on it, I had no idea what I was saying or typing. Quite honestly I do not think any of what I type was legible it was just me randomly hitting buttons as fast as I could. The phone was plastic so it had a very soft and smooth feel to it, while the smell, well it smelt like old plastic. I am pretty sure I never tasted it, but I am sure if I had it would taste almost like blue raspberries, cause why not its blue so it can taste like blue raspberries. You could here it cause when you would press a button it would beep or if you would hit the call button you could hear the ringer like you were getting a call. Now that I look back at how I used to use the phone and pretend to type and call, it was a good tool now because it can now type and send messages on m phone now at a rapid pace. And to see the similarities in the phones is almost weird, they both make sounds when you would use them. They all have buttons, although the one I have now is a touch screen. The toy phone also had a fake camera and if you would hit the camera button you could hear it click as if you had taken a picture, so I would go around to my family and have them smile or something and take a picture of them, now it didn’t work but my family were good sports and went along with me.
Being read to was probably the most beneficial to me learning how to read, I was read to everyday by either my mom or my grandmother. My grandma and I used to read “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” every time we saw each other. Hearing how the words were pronounced and following along with the reading was great. I knew what was being said and how it was spelled by doing it that way. Sometimes when we came across a word I did not know I would have to sound it out and then say the word normally. Or other times I would have to write the word out myself while sounding it out. Most times though it was just them reading to me and me sitting and listening while if follow along. Often times I would follow along with my finger so I could learn to keep my place while they read and not get too distracted, but me not getting distracted is very hard. Some people say they find ways to get distracted but me, I feel it is ways to get distracted find me. Other than listening and following along, I would have to tell them what the paragraph we read or the chapter we read was about, I feel that not only helped me reading but also with reading comprehension because I was able to put into my own words the passage that was just read to me and I was able to describe it. The books usually smelt new, but it did not have a distinct smell to it and taste I never tasted the book so I can’t make a guess on how it tasted. It was usually a paper copy of a book so it wasn’t stiff and was able to be bent or folded, the book was not very old but wasn’t brand new, it was probably a book from one of my brothers but who knows, it could have been anyones before mine. When I go into Elementary school my mom bought me my first book “Captain Underpants” and I read the whole series about three times I loved it so much! Often times I would have to tell my mom or whoever a summary of the chapter or pages that I read to help me get better at reading comprehension. In Middle school I thought I was too cool for reading, I dreading reading, absolutely hated it. I have no reason why I did, but I did. I grew out of that once I got to high school and I had summer reading, I started to enjoy reading again. The books were not always interesting but I found something in the books I could relate to or at least tried to.