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Douglas Lee

Literacy Narrative
UWRT 1101
Jennifer Nicole Vogt
The Landous Me XIV
Big, big, big, big water. It's very big, big, big, big water. Its deep and dark and
dangerous. Its scary and its strangerous. And things could re-arranger us. In that big
water!!! Oh geez, The Land Before Time V, The Mysterious Island. This movie was one of
my most favorite movies in the early years of my life. Nothing spoke to me better than watching
this movie over and over. Deep inside, The Land Before Time V was the basic start of my
literacy. I wanted to draw significance on this movie because the dialogue demonstrated within
the movie closely associates what kind of literate skills (reading/writing) I tend to use today.
They profoundly use undefined words, for example in the song Big Water a character named
Petrie sings the part Its scary and its strangerous. When I am writing I sometimes do this, I
would place suffixes onto singular words which cannot co-exist. Like the way I want to say
mine-s or whatsoever-ing. These imaginary words are of normal context to me, and doesnt
it seem to bother me until I start typing and a red squiggly line appears... Thats when I am like
WHAT? I thought that was word? Reading a word properly is a no brainer, for example;
instructor but wait give me a couple of hours and youll hear me say instructionalist.
But to think of it, when I was a kid Ive always wanted to create new words. I guess these
strangerous words that I imply as defined in a Webster dictionary to myself is what I call
Douglas Lees new words. Sometimes I lay in my bed and I recite my strangerous words,
giggling on how embarrassing it would sound but that just shows how far my literacy skills are
capable of ranging; goofy fake words to abstract and spatial words. Now it might sound like I all
happy and proud that I can speak and write strangerous words but intentionally I would consider

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is as a negative encounter that positively developed me as a literate person. Because I have seen
and used words that are undefined, I am cautiously aware of my writing and being cautious
helps me revise a paper into a quality and unique paper.
Falling back into the olden days, I can recall back to elementary school in Seattle,
Washington. The place looked and felt very different compared to my current living in Charlotte,
NC well at least from what I remember through a past decades eye. I was born and raised in
Seattle for about 7-8 years while I grew up in Charlotte for about 11 years. The year differences
between the two definitely does not correlate with choosing which I feel more at home to. I get a
feeling whenever I imagine my hometown, a feeling that is highly influential; influencing my
writing, reading, and/or oral presentation. The feeling is at the end of nearly impossible to
describe but feeling it sets an atmosphere standard to what path my literacy is going to aim for.
For example, my kindergarten classroom was basically like a 25x25 foot living room connecting
to an identical room with no door or physical barrier between them. When you walk in, theres
another smaller room between the two symmetrical big rooms at the back; that was where we
kept our belongings. The most important part of Kindergarten was that, for some reason I
remember going past the locker room (the room which held our belongings, it didnt look like
a locker though), opening the door (playground in the back) and seeing a somewhat dreary, rainy
but peaceful and lightful day (OH here I go again using strangerous words). In many of the
darn times I run into an assignment talking about childhood and childhood growth; the blurry
memory of Kindergarten awaits me and it confines me to express my literacy in a box consisting
of that memorys atmospheric tone and mood (I hope you are not lost reading what I just wrote).
Another way to see what I am trying to analyze down to is that, these memorical photographs
within my brain is strongly engraved into my literate knowledge and how I am able to apply my

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literacy to appropriate performances. I listen to dreary and sad songs; they make me enter a
depression state which is weird because it makes me feel happy in a sad way, as well as happy
and lit up songs; they make me cheer up and reminds me that no one is perfect. Peaceful songs
are songs that calms my mood; one time I ended up sunbathing on a cold winter evening because
of this. You see, with many things dealing with literate familiarities about growth as a child to
adulthood; it orbits around this mental feeling I have experienced from my elementary school. I
definitely would say that this feeling I contract every so often can be positive and negative.
Which on the cons side, it may negatively affect my literacy because sometimes in the
end, no one knows what the heck I am trying to say. I have learned that at times my feelings can
greatly drive me as a writer and reader to great depths but also land me at the bottom of the ditch.
Thus, helping me develop my writing and reading skills to take in account of things on the open
plain rather than a narrow airline road that extends to I dont know how far; both my pros and
cons of that elementary feeling were and still is a tremendously important factor to the
development of my literacy.
In addition, the combination of The Land Before Time V and my elementary school days
both adds up to form my personally advanced literacy. The movie uses ridiculously undefined
terms and my school memories embrace those terms, creating a personal text with a specified
aura. More so, it can be thought as an example such as, I search for those scarecfully windful
cloud-like days with sunshine and green patches. If you noticed, I had a connection of the two
personal literate inspirations in that sentence. I used undefined words and incorporated a
contradicting visual atmosphere which reinforced the dreary, rainy, peaceful, and lightful
scenery.

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What caught me up even more was moving to Charlotte, which nonetheless also
differentiated my reading, writing, and speaking literacies. The language I was hearing and the
ways I saw literacy read really engaged me to evolve positively. NC is situated further south
compared to Washington thus I heard a lot of slang used, like the word yall. After a couple of
years I began to replace my How are you guys doing today? into How yall doin? Then I
started writing that down as if it was something used worldwide. Back in the North, the custom
of proper literacy was more common; to a certain extent. When I say proper literacy I mean
without an accent conjoining with the pronunciation of the word. People from the north didnt
have much of an accent and read every single word the way it was written down in the dictionary
to be pronounced like; for example plow /plou/. While the south of the country incorporated a
distinct stress on terms and sentences that made it nasal-like to the ear; turkey /trk/ ends up
sounding like turkey /trkai/. Being able to see both aspects of literacy from different poles of
the world has developed me into a better writer and reader of various texts because it allowed me
to open my mind of what literacies consisted of and which literacies were existing around me.
So it turned out that even though I depicted unrecognizable language and writing in quite
a few different ways; and occasionally I just went with the flow and felt embarrassed about it at
night like usual, I was able to recognize my personal faults. And recognizing them truly built my
development as a reader and writer of various texts. Overall, its safe to say I have prevailed and
assembled who I am and possibly may be in the future. Sometimes I wonder perhaps this is
nearly the beginning of my literate education, rather just a warm up for a very long route that
awaits me.
There is a quote that I am very familiar with, and it goes like this: Forever is a long long
time, and time... has a way of changing things. I like to think about this quote when considering

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my literacy because it influences my acceptance to new learnings, so I can progress as a stronger

writer and reader. It kind shows that if time has a never ending frame, nor does the growth of my
literacy... and even though I have already developed such a complex and confusing literacy from
the past 2 decades, there is still room to grow for the next possible 7 decades up ahead.
Thus, every so often I watch The Land Before Time V over and over and revision my
kindergarten class through my dreams. OH and dont forget about my daily sales employment
greeting How are yall doing on this fine day!!!? It reminds me that due to such positive and
negative encounters of literacies, developing as a child; these were the things that if I were to
have never had encountered I would have never developed into the writer and reader of
various texts I am today.