Reading Response #1

I think that both bodies of work relate to what Ballenger describes as
characteristics of a personal essay. They both are told in narrative form and give a first person view into the reading and makes us more able to connect with what they are saying. I find it interesting that Ballenger says “personal essays relies on and observation” and both stories completely rely solely on pure memory and recollection of times past. Both stories review the past to relate us to the present, one starts out with the past and the other correlates it within the story but both use reflection to come to that “so what” point.
In the first story, Hogg shows a young girl infatuation with a musical artist. His charm, wit and smile capture her and even though every girl in America is fantasying about him, she takes his words personal as if he writes his songs for her. This is true of most young girls obsession with a pop singer, every girls takes his words to heart as if he was thinking of them personally when he was writing the song. I recall when the Back Street Boys and N’Sync came on the scene women of all ages, grade school to house wives dreamt of being swept away by one of the members. However as noted in the reading as many facts you can know about a person and can actually never really know the person by just what you read and see on television. This is that person’s persona as she later says in the reading, this is the way they come across to audiences to save face and look good. When she attends the first concert she has the image of a young and charming Davey Jones, but notes he had lost his baby face and looks much older than what she has seen on shows and her own perception. Still she is overwhelmed and overlooks the minor differences. This shows when you idol or look up to a figure of some sort no matter what anyone says or thinks you always have your thoughts of them as that hero or whatever they mean to you. I even fall prey to this as well. I consider Michael Jordan the greatest basketball player ever and Tom Brady the best quarterback in the NFL. It doesn’t matter to me that Kobe Bryant scored eighty one points in a game and that Jordan never scored more than seventy. Just because Peyton Manning threw fifty one touchdowns in a single season and Brady only threw forty nine in my mind regardless to whatever else anyone else does I consider them the best.
In Black’s story she is reflective and appreciative. The saying goes you never realize what you had until it is gone and this statement holds true to this passage and life in general. I am even realizing that now, my mother’s cooking, a room to myself, free laundry the list is endless. Yet when you are in the situation instead of appreciativeness we often mumble, complain and take for granted the things we do have rather than what we don’t. Black hated the lack intelligence of the local people because their mindset was not that of hers. She fought hard not to accept their ways and waited for the day that she could break away and not be subject to it any longer. It amazes me how we resist things this without even giving them thought or the time of day. Many people would love to visit the beautiful sandy beaches of Hawaii and soap of the sun and scenery yet Black sees it as uncivilized and unmannered people. So she leaves at the first chance she gets which is college as most of us do.
So where is this “so what” point it is simple. The once something is taken away you realize its importance as does Black. When she is digging through the mud and is refreshing by how satisfying the work is she wonders how she ever left. She realizes that in order to see true beauty all it takes is a open mind and a will to explore the wonderful things around you. Hobb’s point is a little different. She realizes after putting her childhood idol on a pedestal even into her late twenties that people are just people like everyone else and that what is seen on TV and the real them is complete opposites. For both stories it takes them into adulthood to realize the simplistic ways of their childhood.