ImPerceptibility

Archive for March, 2008

I wasn’t going to post this because I’m not sure I like it but then I remembered this post and here it is. Enjoy, or not. It’s OK with me either way.

When I was in grade school we didn’t have a school library but we would walk to the public library once a week and check out books. One day I wanted to get a book about Helen Keller from the young-adult section. The teacher told me I couldn’t because it was too hard for me to read. The librarian, a wonderful woman I love to this day, told her she should let me, but the teacher wouldn’t. She got me a book about Helen Keller from the kids’ section. She didn’t want me to be discouraged.

When I got home I showed my mom the books I had gotten and told her I wanted the big book but the teacher had said it was too hard for me. She stopped in the middle of cooking dinner and drove me back to the library.

I tried reading the book but it was too hard for me. I don’t remember being traumatized by this. I just read bits and pieces and returned it to the library when it was due.

I’m really glad my mom did that. I learned a lot more than the story of Helen Keller that day. I think that has influenced my decision to allow my children to check out any book that they want when I take them to the library. I’ve always enjoyed seeing what catches their interest from week to week.

This week I was in for a bit of a surprise. My oldest came walking out of the book stacks with this book. The Complete Idiots Guide to Caring for Aging Parents. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or thankful that she cares. I think I’ll go with thankful.

Chris from O’Donnell Web has set up what he calls a self-service blog carnival for thinking homeschoolers.

The idea behind Thinking Homeschoolers is to give us an excuse to think and write about something other than curriculum decisions or the latest dumb ass statement from HSLDA. (If you are offended by the HSLDA comment you really shouldn’t be here.) Every two weeks we’ll release a new topic. Any homeschooler that wants to write about that topic simply does so on their own blog and provides a link here.

Thanks to Chris for getting this started. One of my biggest concerns when I was deciding if I would homeschool was the almost complete absence of any opinion other than those of extremely conservative Christian homeschoolers. Some of the craziness was a bit frightening. Luckily I found Chris’s blog and a few others and it gave me hope. I have had other people e-mail me with the same concerns. I think this could be a great place for the rest of us to step up and let others see the true face of homeschooling.

So far the first assigned topic is Do you feel like you pay too much in taxes? for tax day April 15th. The next topic will be on April 30th and it will be open ended based on National Spank Out Day / National Day of Reason / Prayer. I think I might have a few things to say about that. The remaining weeks are open for suggestions. If you’re a thinking homeschooler, or you’re planning on becoming one, head on over and join in. It’ll be good for you. I promise. We can even be creative. Maybe Chris will serve beer.

I’m not feeling well today. Perhaps the virus that is taking over my body started yesterday with my brain. That might explain why I posted pictures of huge-ass underwear and threatened to buy MyHusband extra small condoms. Then again, maybe not. Who knows? So, instead of risking another post like that I am stealing a comic from Bill at Frowning of a Lifetime. If you haven’t seen his comics you should go now. They’re a lot of fun and he’s getting very good. Just don’t ask him to make tea. Trust me on that one.

I keep a list of odds and ends I need to pick up from different stores. Sometimes MyHusband will be going out and he’ll take the list and pick up what I need. This happened a few weeks ago. I was kinda tired and grumpy so he decided to take the kids to Target, and he took the Target list. My Target list looked something like this

Tights – (Youngest)
Raincoat – (Oldest)
Socks – (MyHusband)
Pack of underwear – Me

I didn’t think about it. At least not until he came home.

“They didn’t have your size underwear so I bought the largest ones they had. The saleslady said they didn’t carry underwear in your size.”

A little confused, I cocked my head to the side and pulled the pack of underwear out of the bag. Then I opened the package and held them up for him to see. He turned a little pale.

“Exactly how big do you think my ass is?” I asked him.

He sat down in his chair and pondered the question while wearing the classic deer in the headlight look.

After a brief discussion in which we discussed that panty size and pants size is not the same thing we started to see the humor in the situation.

I know he didn’t mean anything by it, but next time I’m at the pharmacy, I’m buying some extra small condoms. All’s fair in love and war.

1. After my husband leaves for work I scoot over to his side of bed, because it smells like him. Then I snuggle up with his pillow and pretend we just made love.

2. I spontaneously burst into song at weird moments. I’m not a good singer. I don’t care. Last night I finished the dishes then stood in the doorway and sang a verse of Dixie Land. MyHusband and the girls giggle and ignore me. Next time I’ll sing it with a French Accent. (Listen to it. It’s worth it)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1wAnyWvjZo&hl=en]

3. I can’t go to sleep unless the closet door is closed.

4. I sort M&M’s by color then arrange them into triangles. I can make as many triangles as I want but each row has to be all the same color. Then I eat each side until I’m down to one. I suck on the last one until it melts.

5. When strangers stand too close to me in a line I fantasize about farting on them. One time I did and then I made a funny face and pretended he did it. Everyone completely fell for it.

So, anyone brave enough to tell me about some of your craziness? I’m in the mood for crazy tonight.

This is how I remember the guy at Circuit City. He kept staring at me. I stuck my tongue out at him. He laughed and walked off.

Today I was thinking about the moment I became a homeschooler. It wasn’t when I mailed the NOI or when I decided to homeschool my kids. That was the moment it became official. I was thinking about the moment the thought became a primitive idea. It then grew, like the science experiments in my childhood closet, into something real and tangible. I was in seventh grade.

Mr. W. was my teacher and he was well known as a loud man. We would hear him yelling so loud that our teacher had to close the door. Tales of him picking up a student and his desk and slamming it up and down on the floor was a common recess story. Him grabbing a stack of comic books from a disinterested student and tossing them out the window was another. I don’t know if these stories were true but we believed them. We were all afraid of him by the time we got to seventh grade. I think he liked that.

He was a properly raised southern man. He called all the girls darling and all the boys young man. He demanded the boys keep their shirts tucked in and the caps stayed off in the building. He never yelled at the girls. Sometimes when we were particularly annoying you would see his nostrils start to flare and he would look up the sky and yell at god, but he never yelled at us. I remember being afraid that one day he would snap and kill us all. I had a crazy imagination like that. I suppose I still do.

Anyway, the moment I started my journey to become a homeschooler started in his classroom. It was the day after we had a substitute teacher. When he returned he told us the substitute has written that we hadn’t behaved well while she was there. I looked at him and knew he was lying. I knew the substitute hadn’t written that because it wasn’t true. I sat there angry as I had ever been. One after one he bullied my friends into raising their hands and admitting they had misbehaved while he was gone. I decided I was not going to raise my hand.

Eventually only me and two people who had been absent the day before were left. He then tried to get my friends to say that I had misbehaved. I sat there staring at the wall across the room and holding my hands tightly in lap to keep them from trembling. They sat there with their hand half-heartedly raised staring at their desks. He eventually realized I wasn’t going to raise my hand. He told me I’d learn a valuable lesson when I had to leave the room knowing I wasn’t taking responsibility for my action when everyone else was being honorable and staying for detention. I sat there looking at his wild eyes and flaring nostrils wondering what was wrong with me and thinking I was screwed. I did walk out of there and every step was like torture.

Once I made it outside I ran with my backpack bouncing against my back and I hated him. I hate school. I hated every person in my class. I hated my parents for making me go to school. By the time I crossed the main street I decided he was terrible person and I was going to tell him so.

The next day I dreaded going to school but I did. I found three copies of the answer to a test question tucked in my desk. He had given it to the students to reward them for their honesty. As he passed out the tests he mentioned that the people who had stayed after school wouldn’t have any problems with question number five. He turned around and looked at me. I was a quiet, well-behaved student. I never got in trouble. I knew how to play the game. But something inside me changed that day. I told him I didn’t need the answers to his test because I already knew the answers. I knew all the answers. I didn’t even have to study. Then I sat there scowling at him. It wasn’t quite the tirade I had planned out in my mind but it was something.

He stood there with his mouth hanging open for a minute then he went and sat at his desk with his head in his hands while we took the test. I was worried that I wasn’t going to make it home alive.

Now, all these years later, my hands still tremble just a little when I think about that. There’s a little lump of anger and I keep pausing to rub it with my fist. It’s located directly under my xiphoid process. I know that’s the correct name of the bone because after that Mr. W. would photocopy pages of his college text book and let me draw diagrams of bones and muscles in my notebook while he taught the lessons the school board decided we needed to learn. When I think about that, the lump changes to something else. I’m not sure what. Maybe that’s my homeschooler lump. I’m not sure.

At this point in my life I have come to conclusion that not only do I not know how to play pool, I should never try and learn. I believe if you did a detailed astrological chart of my birth there would in fact be a pool cue with a circle around it and inside that, across the center, would be a big red line. I am almost certain of this and there have been many instances throughout my life to reinforce this belief. I’ll list them:

1. At about the age of eight I was playing pool at my dad’s friend’s house. He was a loud crotchety old man with a foul mouth. Even though my dad told me he was harmless, I was kinda afraid of him. His grandson was there and at some point he yelled that if we ripped the felt on the table he was going to beat our asses. I decided it was in my best interest to find other ways to entertain myself.
2. In my early teens, a friend and I decided to cross the invisible line in a popular restaurant and enter the poolroom on the right instead of the seating area on the left. It was full of some weird, cross-pollinated group of bikers and rednecks. We walked over to an empty table and put in our quarters. The pool balls didn’t come out. My friend said something about it and a big drunk guy with a bandana and leather jacket told us, “It means if you can’t roll with the big boys you should just roll” We rolled extra quick over to the kiddies section and ate our onion rings. To this day, I have never gone back.
3. Fast forward to age 18 and you’ll find me in a sports bar in Norfolk. The guy I was dating decided to teach me how to play pool. Except for the fact I was drunk and he was determined to teach me how to play, things may have gone alright. He didn’t appreciate my carefree approach and I wasn’t appreciating him barking orders at me as he stood behind me trying to push me around. My roommate gave him this look that scared the hell out me, then she told him to back off. He ignored her until her brother (my informally adopted big brother) said the same thing. I decided a game of drunken darts was more my thing. He decided it was time to leave.
4. Unable to see the futility in attempting to learn the game of pool, I found myself a few months later in a club in Virginia Beach. I had gone with a former roommate. There were some bands playing and I was…uhhh…high on life and somehow ended up in the poolroom. Things were going great this time. She was teaching me how to play pool and I was working on some free drinks when a guy asked if he could join us. We agreed and before we knew what was happening he was getting angry because she was better at pool than he was. She tried to lose but he figured that out and got angrier. Once he started talking about his counselor we decided it was time to leave. She asked some big drunk guy wearing a bandana (but no leather jacket) to keep him there and we hit the door running. We didn’t stop until we made it back home. I didn’t sleep too well that night.
5. A few years ago we rented a house and there was a pool table downstairs. MyHusband offered to teach me how to play and I was having a really good time. Then the girls decided they wanted to play. I was standing there watching him teach my daughter how to hold the pool cue and thinking he was so amazing and wonderful with the kids when something crashed into the right side of my head. My other daughter had decided to try on her own and I was in the direct line of fire. It seemed to knock some sense into me. That was the point I realized that pool was not my game.

These are five good reasons for me to never attempt to play pool again. I have no desire to work on a sixth reason. Yet, something tells me I will. I’ve always wanted to play pool.

Next post: How my potatoes came in the mail ;)

I’ve been neglecting you. I know. Feel free to scold at will. I’m kinda in the mood for that right now. To make up for my lack of posting I have prepared a quick summary of all the blog posts that were not posted.

I read some books

We had science experiment week

We took the pantry closet out of our kitchen and replaced the sliding glass door with a single door.

We went to see my brother and his new chicks.

MyHusband got a new job.

My potatoes came in the mail.

It was a very exciting week and I think they’d all make a good blog post. I might write about them later. Right now I’m kinda tired. I’m going to go eat baked beans and take a bubble bath. :)