I Am Not a Jughead
Sawyer Johnson
ENGL 1100.46

Reading and writing have been a very big part of my life for as long as I can remember. There have been positive influences and negative influences through both reading and writing, from learning to read from Archie comics, to being told that I was stupid because my writing style wasn’t up to par with my teachers, to being elaborate in my descriptions. Many other things have influenced my ability to read and write. My grandparents and my parents, my teachers, and I have all influenced my feelings on reading and writing.

I used to read stories with my parents every night. I loved reading with my parents, and especially my grandparents, and sharing the experience and joy of a story, like watching a movie with friends. We used to always read West Side Stories together. Just listening to the stories was something that I enjoyed doing. I guess it was the idea that I would read a page and then just sit back and listen for a page that made me so excited to read. As I progressed through the years, it became easier and easier to read the books that I was reading. That is why progressing through the book difficulties were so helpful in the growth of my ability to read as I moved from large print books to small print ones, from picture books to non-picture books.

Archie comics were funny to read, and they always had a good punch line at the end of the stories. I remember buying my first Archie comic when I was younger, but I am not sure exactly how old I was. It was at Harris Teeter, a nearby grocery store, and when we were checking out I was looking at all the stuff they always have crammed all around. I saw the comic and asked my mother to buy it, and she did. It had a picture of Jughead inhaling a burger. To me, Archie comics did not really feel like reading to me when I was younger. It felt like an activity, like watching TV or playing a sport. That was the beauty of Archie comics. I grew attached to the characters like Archie, Jughead, Betty, and Veronica, and it was as if I was one of the characters in the story. Archie is the cool, laid back guy who is nice to everyone. He is someone that I wanted to be like. Veronica was the rich spoiled girl that always got her way. I did not like Veronica, because I did not get everything I wanted when I was growing up.

I have been influenced greatly by my grandparents. They are older, wiser, and always had something to advance my reading and writing ability. My grandfather is a good man. He is quiet and he is smart. He is always reading books by Tom Clancy and all those other guys who are into writing books about the Army and secret ops missions. I always loved the illustrations on the cover, even if I never read the actual book. There was always a target or a soldier with his face painted staring at me through the cover of the book. Then there was always a small paragraph describing the action of the story. It would always be really corny, such as, "You better watch out. You could be the next one targeted," or something cheesy like that. I have always thought about what the movie forms of these books would be like, probably really good, and a lot of them have been made into movies. The thing is that a good book is a good book to me. It doesn’t matter if it has its own movie. It is all about personal taste. Some people like romance novels, some people like dramas or sports books, and some people prefer non-fiction over fiction, but in my mind, there is only one type of book that I could read openly, without it being pushed upon me in a classroom. Action-adventures are my favorite types of books and pretty much the only type of book that I will read voluntarily.

My grandma, who I call "Mimi", is obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records books. Every time I visit my grandma she always has an interesting fact to tell me about something so random that it is actually something that sparks my attention, like the man who stuck the most clothespins on his face, or the longest jump ever done in an automobile. These things sparked my interest, and even though I didn’t like those books quite as much as my grandma thought I did, I still enjoyed reading them when I was younger. The information in those books was so interesting that it just sparked my attention. Since my grandparents live like three miles from my house in Raleigh, we visited them a lot. I would bring home one of the books and an Archie comic every time that I went over there.

Reading newspapers and magazines, instead of just looking at the pictures when I was a kid, was very good for my development in reading. Looking at pictures in magazines and newspapers will pretty much capture everything that is going on in the article, but to actually read the article at such a young age was difficult for me because it was non-fiction, and that is mostly boring to a kid. I can see a child reading a book about dinosaurs or a famous player of the sport they love, but not anything having to do with the politics and murders that clutter newspapers. Secondly, it was tough because it seemed like the title and picture wrapped up the whole article before I could even read it. Now, to me, reading is like torture. It takes a lot of will power for me to actually sit down and read something out of a book. It is not because I don’t like reading. It is that I do not like being told to read certain things.

To me, it seems like school reading assignments, like required readings such as The Odyssey or plays and poems by William Shakespeare, give reading a bad name. Some of Shakespeare’s work was interesting to me, but it just was not appealing as a whole. For most people, reading is something that is looked down upon as something that is mandatory. I think if there was no reading in school that we could still learn just as much from personal reading than from some random story that no one can understand. In my free time, I would easily read, but it would not be stories about Macbeth or a king that is corrupt to his people. I would read an action book, such as one by Tom Clancy that actually sparked my interest. The only real thing that kept me into reading was making sure that I read books all the way through. I have trouble doing this with certain books, like books that have a bad beginning. If I don’t plan on finishing a book, then it seems worthless to me to even start on it. That is why I feel like me reading on my own time is more beneficial that reading for school. Finishing a book really makes me see what the author was going for in the book, and it also answers questions that might be lingering in the back of my mind.

Another influence on my writing was my senior year English teacher. I am not blaming anything on her because I know that when I wrote for her it was probably not up to par with college level writings, and that is what she was looking for. She was a recent college English professor who switched down to high school for some unknown reason. This teacher worked my self confidence in writing right into the ground, giving me 69s and 50s, and on occasion, I actually passed a paper or two. As the year went on, I started spending more and more time on each paper without any improvement in my grades. So when I went to her and asked her what I needed to do to get out of the rut I was in, she simply told me that there was nothing I could do, that my writing ability was not what it needed to be and that I was "stupid." Now to be called "stupid" by a teacher who was supposed to be educating me on the ways of her subject is probably the most humiliating experience that I have ever been through. So, I simply wrote the rest of my papers and ended up passing somehow. I guess she felt bad for calling me stupid to my face and gave me an 85 on my last paper. But the thing that has bothered me is whether or not I deserved that 85 or if it was just given to me simply out of pity. To know that I probably should have failed 12th grade English truly made me think about my ability to write and read. It was a weird thing to be struggling to pass in an English class because I have always made at least an A or B in my previous English classes.

There are so many people who influenced me in different ways for reading and writing. My mother and father are both very good at writing and grammar so they were a very positive influence on my writing ability. Whenever I had a paper due, I would always have my mom or dad revise it and check over it to make sure that it was in the right order and the grammar was all there. That is why I feel so confident in my writing abilities. Now, however, there is no one to check for grammar mistakes or spelling, so now I have to figure it out for myself. I am banking on the fact that I will learn it eventually through being in English every year. Overall, I feel like my ability to read and write is at the point now where I can tie them both together for one big resource. Like, if I had a research project, I could read the basic ideas and write my opinions, based on facts, on that topic. The positive influences in my life with regards to reading and writing heavily outweigh the negative one, so that is how I can enjoy reading and writing so much.