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A year without school
Or, the time I was homeschooled and had a major crush on a boy whose brother was in love with me.
I wasn’t going to change names but then I chickened out thinking my seventh grade crush would see and so I did.
When I was in 7th grade and she in 3rd, Sam and I were homeschooled. Our mom was our teacher, along with Martha Stewart and Ellen Degeneres.
I don’t always tell people that I was homeschooled, mostly because I have to explain it, and then I can tell they think we went through a traumatic experience or a sickness that caused us to be pulled from school. “No, we just wanted to try it,” isn’t a very satisfying answer.
In reality, Sam and I didn’t like going to school. I lied to my friends that my eyes were red not because of crying but because “the A/C in the car blows right into them.” On top of that, my mom wanted to give us a better education. She had experience teaching, and cousins on both sides of my family tried at some point. Why couldn’t we?
My mom got a lot of, ahem, feedback and comments from other parents when they heard what we were doing — mostly from less progressive moms than she. When we went back to public school after that year of homeschool, we hadn’t fallen behind at all and we had gained so much. Looking back, I love…
