"Alexie-Like" Literacy Narrative

In the small village I grew up in, our grocery store, an ancient A&P, sat centered in the middle of town. It was close enough to walk to from our meager little house and I often remember journeying with my mother the several blocks there and back to get our weekly supply of canned beans, white-boxed generic ice cream, and bags of Malt-o-Meal. Years later the massive two floor building with its banister clad staircases would be torn down and left an empty parking lot to crack and decay, but in those precious early years of my life, it stood proud and large, displaying its pealing paint and chipped window panes, welcoming the town in through creaky doors to save six cents that week on ground beef. In the fall, along with the autumn inspired glassware that sported cheap painted-on leaves in orange and yellow, small books would appear on wire racks at the front of the store. "Just in time for school," a sign would read. Just in time in deed! Thin hard backed story books with glossy colored covers gleamed at patrons and one could almost be hypnotized by their vividness if they spun the rack around too fast.

Golden Books! Golden Books! I would jump for joy and beg my mother to buy me at least one story book. We were terribly poor in those days, daddy worked second shift at a factory as a custodian and mom stayed home with me and my older brother, who never seemed to be around much. My mother would look nervously at the books and inside the white envelope the weekly food budget was kept. Even as a very young child I knew how cash-poor my family was, I never not knew the struggle to put food on our table or shoes on my feet--for years the only shoes my family could afford for me were cheap canvas slip-ons with thin rubber soles, they were miserable to wear in the winter--but how could I complain? I rarely asked for anything as a child, but I had early on become a lover of words and books were my safe place. Perhaps it was the painfully awkward lisps I had developed, it was difficult to communicate with people, I was humiliated and alienated for it, so talking or requesting things vocally was not common. But a book! I had to ask for a book--I needed my safe places, even if they were temporary refuges in the pages of a short children's story.

My dear mother somehow managed to allocate a few extra dollars for a book or two and I would run home with stories like "The Pokey Little Puppy," and "The Shy Kitten." These simple little books became priceless treasures to me, objects of untold worth and an abundance of imagination waiting to bloom in my mind.

I still have in my possession these rare treasures, occasionally I look at their worn covers and the crayon marks on the pages--I think, "look! Even then I was trying to annotate and analyses my texts!" And often, when I am reading some kind of literature or theory, I wish I was opening the pages of "The Pokey Little Puppy" instead...