Unscripted, unedited. Using the transcription site Speechnotes

5 minute story; When I knew my Dad was a Superhero

When I was younger my dad and I used to go to all the different parks in North Vancouver and West Vancouver and explore the outdoors together. We always had the best time being outside together, walking along the beach, exploring the trails, or finding the best wading pools. One day, lebanon, we went to one of our favourite spots, house Park. We decided to go down one of The Ravines which was quite Steep and had a number of stairs leading down to the rocky Shore. My dad was up near the rocks and I started to head towards seawater common baby myself I always loved the water. I noticed that there was this big tree log that was wedged up against the side of the ravine. As a side note, I was also an avid rock climber the stage so when I see rocks and the rock face my first instinct is to start to climb it. So as I am going towards this rock face near this massive log that is wedged up against and I start climbing. I get about three or four feet off the ground and my feet slip out from underneath me and I put my hand down on the log to support me as I fall. Well, not only did the log not support me but I fell right into the water landed in between two rocks. And that massive tree log fell right on top of my leg. All I remember is screaming at the top of my lungs and breathing really really fast, in and out in and out. And I remember my dad running into the water as it seemed that the tide was coming in and the water was no longer at my legs but up near my stomach. I remember my dad telling me to breathe, me that everything is going to be okay, as this giant tree log has wedged me in between these two rocks. I don’t remember being in any pain, it was more like shocked and I’m sure that it hurts since the log was as I’ve said massive. My dad, hero., did delay the log off of my leg and was able to pick me up and carry me out of the water. Put me on his back and begin to scream for help as he walked the long walkway back along the Rocks towards the stairs we both kept screaming for help but nobody was coming it seems like if we were all alone and so my dad climb where is up to the very top until we got to the grass area. When we got to the grass area we noticed there was a group of people up there and wondered why they hadn’t come to help us. Said that they thought it was just some kids fooling around and spell awful. Call 911 and I remember being in the ambulance though I don’t remember the ambulance coming. I remember being in the hospital and it turns out that I fractured my tibia and my fibia and had to wear a cast for 2 months followed by a fiberglass cast for another two months. Even worse, had happened in June so I was in a cast for the end of the school year and all of the summer which was not fun at all being a kid. The thing I remember the most though is that the firefighters came back to the hospital to see if I was okay and let us know that it took eight of them to lift the log out of the water. I’m pretty sure that was the moment and the day that I realized my dad truly was a superhero.

Reflection

One of the first things that I noticed about the text was how certain conventions were lost in translation, or in this case, transcription. Throughout the story, many common nouns were capitalized to create proper nouns and certain words were broken down into how they would be pronounced, rather than how they should be spelled. Furthermore, having to verbally express punctuation made the text appear awkward in some parts, and completely unreadable in others.

Within the first few sentences, instead of typing out “When I was eleven,” it recorded “lebanon.” This is interesting for two reasons; 1. I must have been talking very fast for it to produce this word instead of the original phrase, and 2. The recorder had known that North and West Vancouver would be capitalized but didn’t do it for the country of Lebanon. So either it didn’t actually think Lebanon was a country or it was just as confused as I was. The text also missed or misinterpreted a lot of words that I said making the sentences grammatically incorrect in a number of places. For example, I was saying, “towards the water,” and it noted, “towards seawater.” This makes me realize that when we speak, our oral explanation has certain nuances that we tend to blend together or say incorrectly. If I was typing, I would have clearly typed out that phrase correctly. However, when I speak the phrase, I actually tend to blend the last “s” of towards, with the word “the.” It’s interesting that the recording picks up on that and literally translates it verbatim. I’ve added a recording of my voice saying the line, and although it’s not extremely clear, I can hear how the recorder could have translated that into “towards seawater.” Can you hear it too?

Thinking about the wrongs and rights in the text, the one I focus on the most is actually the way the text reads. Due to missing words and poor conventions of writing, it might seem to an onlooker that my understanding of the various parts of speech, at least in some parts, is lacking. The text is missing articles, prepositions, linking verbs etc, and I think that I consider these mistakes because I’ve been taught that they are important to proper written output. That a grammatically correct sentence is important, and the fact that certain words are missing or “wrong” make parts of this story a mistake.

When we talk about writing in school, I always have my students map out their ideas before tackling the larger writing piece. In a sense, they are scripting their writing in order to suit the audience – in this case, me, the teacher. They have the opportunity to make drafts, edit, revise, edit again, and they hand in their final “good” copy. I think if they were to tell me a story in this format, it would be quite different than if they were asked to write it. They wouldn’t be thinking about proper spelling, punctuation, and all the other conventions, but rather on the story itself from their point of view. So if I had scripted this story, about the day I realized my Dad was a Superhero, I would have had a rough outline of what I wanted to say, included vivid verbs and adjectives, added in humour where I could, and definitely would have made sure there was proper punctuation and no sentence started with the word, “and.” I think it would have made a difference in how it was understood. There are parts that don’t make sense and clarity is a big bonus to hand to paper or finger to keyboard writing.

Oral storytelling. Gnanadesikan, on the first page of the first chapter, The First IT Revolution, says, “This sentence is a time machine.” She goes on to ask us to imagine a world where there is, “no writing…no books…no scriptures, no diaries…” and allows us to question how text has impacted the way we think and the way we write. Now I have a question for you:

Imagine a world with no voice.

No oral stories, no language, no history to be told about “the good old days,” or “back when I was your age.” Imagine a world where no thoughts were spoken out loud, no life-changing phrases like “I have a dream.” Where would we be as a society? What would we know? What would we think?

I believe that oral storytelling gives us the opportunity to add power to our words with things like body language, tonality, and raw emotion. With the written word we are left to our own imaginations to create these feelings, but unless we have seen them or heard them, that task can sometimes be challenging. I believe that written storytelling is powerful also, but we tend to judge the written word based on what we know of common conventions and as such tend to focus on that when we write. It’s more structured, planned out, decided. Oral storytelling is our mode of transportation for our time machine and those who cannot write, or have a limited understanding of the written word, use their oral language to share their stories across generations. Some of these stories get written down, but I don’t think that it can ever be the same as when they are spoken.