971860

research-article2020
QIXXXX10.1177/1077800420971860Qualitative InquiryWhite and Gloviczki

Research Article
Qualitative Inquiry

Parallel Paths Through the Storm: Three

1­–2
© The Author(s) 2020
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Autoethnographic Sketches sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1077800420971860
https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420971860
journals.sagepub.com/home/qix

Jordan White1 and Peter Joseph Gloviczki1

Abstract
In this article, we share three autoethnographic sketches about childhood experiences with stormy weather. We are
a student–professor authorial team. Jordan wrote the first autoethnographic sketch, Dr. Gloviczki wrote the second
autoethnographic sketch, and the pair coauthored the third autoethnographic sketch. We hope this article encourages
future authorial teams to reflect on the ways that their childhood memories endure, intersect, and interact with one
another in later life.

Keywords
autoethnography, methods of inquiry, reconceptualizing collaboration, decolonizing the academy, pedagogy

1 get into the interior hallway. Though most homes in

I was six. We lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in a
trailer park called Weslin Creek. We lived four miles from
the beach. I remember my aunt being in town from North
Carolina. As someone I admired growing up, my aunt being
at my house was the best thing ever. Having her there
always meant I had someone to play with. The night she
was visiting that summer, I was so terrified of the wind and
rain repeatedly smacking my bedroom window that I slept
with her on an air mattress in our living room. I curled up
next to her. We laid there and watched the living room light
up for hours. Lightning does that.
The next morning when I felt my aunt slide off the air
mattress, I got up right behind her. It wasn’t until then that I
realized just how strong the winds from the storm were.
They had been so strong that my trampoline was now across
the street in my neighbor’s driveway. The winds had picked
the trampoline up over our home, which had to have been
about 13 or 14 feet tall, slung it against my father’s old
white work truck (leaving countless scratches and dents),
and dropped it in our neighbor’s driveway, completely
demolished. I vividly remember standing in our front door
in my favorite fuzzy blue pajamas, seeing this through
stinging, blurry eyes. There had never been anything more
unfair. I was always a fun-loving kid, but that day not even
my favorite aunt being there could have made me less upset.
2 1
The first time I realized how afraid I was of tornadoes, I was
sitting scared in the hallway of our Plummer Lane house. My
parents were away and I was with a favorite babysitter. I
remember waking up, coming down stairs and being told to
Minnesota have a basement, ours did not. The interior hall-
way was the safest place to be. She told me that there was a
tornado in the area and that we should be careful to stay away
from windows. I don’t remember how old I was, somewhere
between five and fifteen, in the way youth blurs with age.
The tornado spared our house and it didn’t even touch down
in or near our town. There may have been a sighting a few
dozen miles away. But Southeastern Minnesota has been
associated with tornadoes for me ever since.
My fear endures. Perhaps, it endures because I never had
an experience with an aunt like Jordan did. I’m envious of
that memory. I find myself retreating into the bonds I did
have: with my parents, my extended family, the people and
places I adore. My own experience with, and fear of, torna-
does came into fuller focus through and after working with
Jordan. I long for the vivid image of watching lightning. I
can’t pinpoint anything like that for myself. I have experi-
ences, but none like Jordan’s. None of them quite quenches
the same need. I wonder how I might make that real for
someone in my own life someday.
3
We have each read one another’s autoethnographic sketches
(Rambo, 2007). Dr. Gloviczki writes: I read Jordan’s to her.
Jordan writes: I read Dr. Gloviczki’s to him. In hearing one
Coker University, Hartsville, SC, USA
Corresponding Author:
Peter Joseph Gloviczki, Coker University, 300 East College Avenue
Hartsville, South Carolina 29550 USA.
Email: pgloviczki@coker.edu
2 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)
another’s words, we recognize the parallel paths alive in
our stories. We find where our built worlds converge as we
write to make sense of our pasts (Richardson, 1994).
We each “increase self-reflexivity” (Humphreys, 2005,
p. 842) by benefiting from one another’s accounts. We
come to understand how weather brings each of us back to
childhood.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Peter Joseph Gloviczki https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4883-
3143
References
Humphreys, M. (2005). Getting personal: Reflexivity and auto-
ethnographic vignettes. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(6), 840–860.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800404269425
Rambo, C. (2007). Sketching as autoethnographic prac-
tice. Symbolic Interaction, 30(4), 531–542. https://doi.
org/10.1525/si.2007.30.4.531
Richardson, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. Denzin
& Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research
(pp. 516–529). SAGE.
Author Biographies
Jordan White is a communication major in her junior year at
Coker University in Hartsville, South Carolina. She is from Myrtle
Beach, South Carolina.
Peter Joseph Gloviczki (Ph.D., Mass Communication, University
of Minnesota, 2012) is an associate professor of communication at
Coker University in Hartsville, South Carolina. His first book is
Journalism and Memorialization in the Age of Social Media
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).