Media Memoir

Media Memoir
By: Joseph Michael Webb
(for an english class)


         Throughout human existence media has, in some form, engaged people for a variety of purposes ranging from entertainment to theology to erudition. Millennia and centuries have come and gone and as so, methods of receiving our media have clearly evolved to fit the needs of shifting societies. Individually, we vary in what forms of media we encounter and actively take part in based upon our experiences with other people who influence us in all aspects of our lives. Undoubtedly, our immediate families and closest of friends encouraged us to explore all of the media that is available to us in our formative years. However, every person that one comes across in his lifetime, no matter how insignificant that person appears to be, impacts the way we live our lives, and thus our media experiences. Personally, my older sister, Gin, has continuously influenced the way in which I seek out media and experience the world around me.     

         My earliest memories include those of viewing television with my older brother and sister who would fight over the remote control while I sat relatively quiet seeing images of Big Bird, Mr. Rodgers, and later Ariel and Pocahontas. As children, we envisioned television as a magical box in which any world or idea was possible if only imagined. When my older brother went to preschool, and then to elementary school, my sister and I were left behind in our house to search for schemes to entertain ourselves. At that age, music was seemingly non-existent to me; a foreign concept in which I had no experience. During my preschool years I rarely spoke when my sister was around, not because I could not actually speak, but because I had absolute faith that Gin would tell my parents what I wanted and needed. As so, my sister was the child among us who chose what movies and shows to watch on the television along with whatever else came along with early childhood.

          When I was four, my sister finally entered the world of school where she quickly excelled in all things involving the written word. After her first grade, my sister was helping our older brother with reading as that was not his forte. She was so enthused with reading that she insisted teaching me to read while I was in kindergarten while she read everything that was not nailed to the ceiling. Though her absolute dedication to reading was not transferred to my older brother, I took to books like candy once I learned to read. Gin consistently introduced me to new books that she had finished and as so, the readability became increasingly more difficult. This excelled reading program was beneficial for me at school in language arts classes, but math was something that suffered for me. As I escalated through the elementary grade level hierarchy, I became increasingly detached from television. During middle school, at the pinnacle of my reading, I would seemingly hibernate in my room at any available time and read constantly. By this point I would go through several books per week and my sister and I were collectively beginning to exhaust the Greenville Library System.

            One night, a few months after Gin earned her driver’s license, and before I had attained my driver’s permit, my sister was driving the two of us to the library. She pulled over on the side of a secondary road and asked me with an outlandish and mischievous grin if I wanted to drive. I, naturally, agreed ecstatically as I took hold of the wheel. I had never driven anything larger than a lawnmower, and my driving made that point painfully clear. I drove for about a minute before hitting a stop sign. The two of us looked each other over for a moment and then started laughing hysterically. There was no damage to the previously beaten-up ancient car, though the sign was bent somewhat. To this day I have yet to tell my parents, and I may keep that secret quiet for some time to come. I can still hear the country radio station’s playing of “landslide” by the Dixie Chicks, a song to which my sister apparently loved to sing obnoxiously to that night. 

              I crossed the threshold into high school with a heavy load of advanced placement and honors courses, due in large part because of the immense amount of reading I had encountered, but my grades began to suffer. Though I would perform well on tests, I seemingly could not do homework or other assignments as I found myself disregarding them for personal reading. I slowly began to tear myself away from books after continual scowling from my mother. At the same time, my sister was beginning to find herself in a similar situation before she graduated. We were to some extent forced to stop reading to that extent as the library had few books unread by the two of us and neither of us income to buy books at local bookstores. During that time I began to pay close attention to music and, again, Gin came to my aid in that department. After she left for college when I was still locked away in high school, she would bring me home CD’s with an eclectic mix of all music seemingly possible.

            From there, I began collecting all the music I could and I would listen to it for hours while I did basically anything else that I needed to do. Whereas books were my primary escape in the previous years, music was increasingly becoming my main source of entertainment. Music proved to be beneficial because I am able to listen to it while I work for school, something that is impossible with pleasure reading. During the summer of 2006, when I was seventeen and Gin was finished with her first year at college, Gin died. For a while, I did nothing in terms of media; that summer was devoted to lying in a vegetative state. I entered my senior year of high school in the fall and I eventually returned to the swing of things and I discovered a new media source. Though I had obviously composed hundreds of essays through the years of my education, I never viewed writing as a pastime. I wrote a poem for a class one day and went home and started writing more as I couldn’t seem to put down my pen. Writing is a brilliant source of emotional release as one can explore and evaluate oneself even though it encourages one to avoid certain topics that seem untouchable.

              When I completed the media survey for one week, I realized just how much I write for pleasure; anything and everything from poetry to stories to journal entries. Through any given school week, I tend to write a total of more than twenty hours. I was also surprised to see that I rack up more than twelve hours of music listening per week. For some reason, it is somewhat disheartening to see how little I read currently. Compared to middle school self locking himself in his room for days with a pile of books, I read nothing. It appears that I have left that part of my life behind me, at least temporarily as I am in school. Television has never been a massive part of my life, but movies are apparently becoming more important to me as a pastime. Gin’s life has modeled these media formats for me through life and clearly even through death someone can easily impact one’s life posthumously.