Home schooling

If you guys didn't know, I go to Sammamish High School.  If you didn't know, I have an English class there that gives me homework.  Also, if you didn't know, I used to be home schooled.  This was a writing project that I did, but I wanted to write more about it, because he only gave me one page to do it.  So here goes.

Up until my 9th grade when I joined Sammamish High School, I was home schooled.  I mostly liked it, because it was a chill environment and it was fairly easy.  Up until about 4th grade, though, I was oblivious to the fact that a couple socially awkward, nerdly home schoolers had spread myths  about the dangers of homeschooling.  It was then I recognized the confused, disgusted look on people's faces when I would tell them that I was, in fact, educated at home.

I would tell them about it, and then immediately try to cover up my sin with a "but it's pretty much the same as public school, just without other people, and my mom doesn't teach me, I have teachers, but if I need help I ask my mom, like public schoolers, and I even play sports and I have a life."

It was too late though.  Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" had already spread to their brain, and they suddenly realized the cause of my stupidity, awkwardness, and acne.  They then had three choices of how to act when around me: to be very liberal, conservative, or normal.

Occasionally, when I showed people my scarlet letter of regular society, they would drop a swear word, or tell me a joke about sex, or tell something involving technology, and  step back to watch the inevitable horror that would soon permeate my facial expression.  Surely I would be shocked that there were bad words in the world, or sex, or cell phones. 

At other times, they would walk on egg shells around me, carefully choosing their words and conversation topics, and never thumbing their PSPs in their pocket or asking me to come play XBOX with them, because I would surely be in question about what an XBOX was, and whether father Jebediah would approve of it.  The conversations somehow would drift towards plowing fields or churning butter, none of which I knew anything about, and they regarded me as incompetent, for I didn't even know how to do what I was born to do.  Attempts at avoiding my harsh judgment were made, so that we could still play basketball together.

Having now gotten past the pain of telling people that I am a nerd destined to be an outcast, whenever I meet a homeschooler, I try to lead the conversations to their life on an Amish farm.  As I notice their disconcerted facial expressions and squirming, I admit to them that I too was once a home schooler.

And then I pull out my cell phone.