An Unschooler Takes on High School

11:17:58 PM EDT

The governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, must read my blog. (Hi, Ted.) That makes me glad I voted for him. Strickland said he will reject federal Title V funding, which requires that schools offer abstinence-only-until-marriage classes. He says kids need to know that abstinence is the best prevention for pregnancy and STDs, but they also need to know how to protect themselves if they do decide to do that bad thing. You don't have to be a governor to pick up on that little bit of wisdom.

Our local paper also reports that "Roughly 40 percent of the federally-funded abstinence education groups in Ohio are either faith-based or anti-abortion organizations." Hmmmm. I bet it's higher than that. Half the schools in this area contract with the same place Stevie's school does, the anti-abortion, abstinence-only outfit mentioned in my last entry. I'll bet most schools who get outsiders to teach sex ed use companies that are run by religious organizations. I guess they don't have time to teach much about the Constitution along with their abstinence programs.

My real question is why is the federal government telling the states how they can spend their education grants? Isn't it a state right to educate children? Why is it OK for the feds to give money for sex ed that has strings attached...and for those strings to be attached at the other end to a cross?

Written by narigonc Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

12:58:32 AM EDT
Hearing Joan Osborne

 

Conversation in the van.

Stevie: Some religious group came and talked to xxx's class about sex today.

Me: Really? Did you get me the booklet?

Stevie: No, mom. They have to turn them back in. They don't get to keep them.

Me: Religion doesn't belong in the schools. It doesn't do any good to tell kids not to do it and then not give them as much information as possible.

Stevie: I don't really get why the Christians are so against sex anyway. Look at Jesus. He kicked down his own mother's virginity like he was kicking down a door. That's one hell of a way to start a religion.

I waited and waited last year for Stevie's health teacher to start the unit on sex. Back in the archives I wrote about how he wasn't comfortable teaching it himself, so he was going to bring in an expert named Mr. Dick.  Some things are so obviously a bad idea. I could understand it if Mr. Dick was a puppet and there was another one named Ms. Vagina, but he was a real guy....who never showed up. They have one year of health in high school and during that year this class didn't learn one thing about sex, which I can tell you is about the only thing they think, talk or dream about. Stevie's friends even ask me about my sex life! (No, I do not. How could you think such a thing?)

Stevie's friend Alex did get a class...yes, one class period....on sex. Somebody from a Christian organization talked to them about chastity and gave them a booklet, which I have. If you want one of your own, you'll have to call 1-888-588-WAIT or go to the website and then you too can learn how waiting for sex can make you free!

I learned a lot from this booklet. I learned that 79% of 15-16 year olds report that hey have never had sex. I think somebody out there is underreporting. Come on now, kids! Raise your hands if you've ever had sex. I think maybe they should have asked the teens themselves instead of their parents to fill out that questionnaire.

Some other "facts" I didn't know. "Fact: The average length of time that an unmarried relationship lasts, once sex is introduced, is 3 weeks." (They don't mention how many relationships don't last once the guy finds out he has to marry her before he'll get any.) Some of the negative consequences of sex besides the most obvious ones: the memories might haunt you (especially if you're a girl and you thought you'd get anything out of it at all); difficulty trusting in the future (once might be enough); disappointed parents (because all teens run right home and tell their parents they just had sex for the first time in the backseat of the family mini van); sexual comparison. I love that last one. Seems to me that's a good reason for taking a test drive before you buy the ring.

Of course there are the expected pages about what to do if you do get pregnant--and what not to do. Pages on why there's no such thing as safe sex. Tips for dating someone who shares your "wish list" for a chaste partner. And a handy little stairsteppy guide for the various stages of arousal and the (don't step over this) line between light kissing and prolonged kissing. You may hug, hold hands or even give friendly looks and smiles, but you may not touch above or below the waist. Orgasms are out of the question. 

There's a card at the end to sign and keep in your wallet. I notice Alex didn't cut his card out and sign it. I wonder if I should mail it to him? He may forget and accidentally have sex if he doesn't have it.

Stevie's friends talk to me about sex all the time. Recently her friend T had a pregnancy scare. In talking with her, I found out she was probably raped but she didn't think so because even though she said no over and over, once he made her do it, she enjoyed it. I didn't want to force that issue, but I told her that when she says no, she deserves to be respected. He also didn't use a condom. He's 19 and already has 2 kids with 2 other girls (and he was the nicest guy she'd ever met). She was on the pill but she usually forgot to take them so she mostly took 2 pills every other day when she remembered. What the hell good would a one-hour lecture on abstinence do this girl? I can't ask Jerry Falwell because he died today and went to Heaven. I'm sure he'd have an answer though.

Stevie took a real sex course at our UU church called Our Whole Lives (OWL) so she knows way more than I do about sex. I did enjoy looking at the pictures at the parents' meeting though. My son took it at age 12 too. He was the youngest kid in the class and he was uncomfortable with a lot of it. Between being homeschooled and not in a sexually charged culture every day, and being the youngest and most immature kid in the class, he was shocked at the way some of the kids acted and talked. But when he got older and started dating, he was grateful for everything he learned. Now, at 22, he wants nothing more than a monogamous relationship built on respect and love. He's never been promiscuous and has even turned girls down. And yet, he wasn't taught to save himself for marriage (unless he chose that). He had the same harrowing and explicit sex education Stevie had and I'm proud of his attitude toward sex and how he treats his girlfriend.

Why can't we trust kids with knowledge? The teens in our church learned more about sex than most hookers know and yet after every session of OWL ended, most of them would say they didn't plan to have sex for a very long time. Learning all about it gave them a good idea just how much responsibility goes along with an active sex life. Giving them knowledge gave them not only choices, but enough information to make good choices. No, most of them probably didn't save themselves for marriage. Let me tell you what, those Christian kids aren't either.

I don't necessarily think it's the school's job to teach kids about sex, but they've done everything they can to cut parents out of kids' lives. Kids are gone at least 8 hours a day and then they come home with homework that takes more time and there are all kinds of activities and lessons and the phone calls because they don't really get to talk to their friends at school. When do parents forge the kind of relationship where they can talk to their kids about deep issues like sex? And do most parents really want  to do it? Don't most parents pretend they only had sex the same number of times as they have children? Sometimes I'm so disappointed in the generation that came out of the sexual revolution. Most of us are no better than our parents were. Somebody should give kids the information they need to make wise choices though, because they sure aren't giving it to each other and MTV is not a good teacher.

I don't want Stevie and her friends having sex. I think they're too young and I know it's not worth the consequences. When they talk to me, I make it clear to them that sex for teenage girls is not fun. They need to wait until the guys have figured it out because it's not worth getting pregnant or an STD when the quality of the sex is bound to be about a -4 on a scale of 1-10. But I don't kid myself. Some of them are sexually active and the ones who are seem to be the ones with the least education about it. They need real information and not this shit about saving themselves for something that's years down the road.

And what the hell is the public school doing teaching religion to kids? Oooooohhhh, it makes me so mad. It's insidious, these assaults on our rights. I hope they make Jerry Falwell read the Constitution before they let him through the pearly gates.

Written by narigonc Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

12:22:19 AM EDT

This is, after all, a blog about high school. I didn't expect to like much about Stevie's high school experience. It's not that I don't think kids can learn in a public school. It's that I don't think they learn as much or as well. I've had a couple of pleasant surprises though--ones that balance out the health teacher last year who couldn't talk about sex. (That's for another day.)

I was surprised when I went for open house this year to find out Stevie's part of a special program--no, not special like that! Her 4 core teachers are part of a teaching team. They coordinate assignments, tests, even topics if they can. They meet weekly and discuss their students, who are all part of the program and in the same core classes. I guess this is experimental because it's the only one like it in the school. Stevie got lucky and happened to take that particular set of classes that put her in this situation. I think it's a great idea. Too bad they don't do it for all the kids.

The other bright spot is her art teacher. A lot of people--adults and kids--look at Stevie with her black and pink hair, dark eye liner, pierced eyebrow and attitude of steel and take her at face value. Some people see beyond the badass reputation she's built around herself to the compassionate, talented girl who lives behind the wall. Her art teacher is one of those who sees the real her and adores her. And don't we always like people who like our kids? She's even letting Stevie be her assistant during her study hall this year.  When Stevie started school last year, she didn't think she'd like this particular teacher. She painted pictures of flowers and small animals. Definitely not Stevie's style. Now she's her favorite teacher.

Unfortunately Stevie's success in her art classes hasn't really inspired her personal art. All the years she was growing up she was constantly drawing or doing art projects. Messy art projects. Messy drawing. I can't count how many times I yelled at her for brushing off her eraser crumbs onto my bed. Art has been her life. She's wanted to be an artist since she looked at the illustrations in her first picture book. Her only career goal is being a tattoo artist.

The school wanted to test her last year for giftedness and sure enough, she's gifted in their opinion. I thought it would help her get into college. It seems to have done her no good at all. She never draws for fun any more. She never does any art projects outside of class unless it's something I ask her to do for a specific reason (like to help me in one of my classes). She will draw wonderful caracatures of people during church, but that's about it.

I've been doing some reading on the effects of praise on kids. As a kid who was told over and over how smart I was, I think these researchers have hit on something. They say telling a kid she's smart has the opposite of the intended effect. Kids who are told they're smart don't try as hard. They give up easier. They underachieve. Kids who are told they worked hard on a particular project and that's why they were successful, tend to work even harder on the next. I was told I was smart. I had one of the highest IQs and my grades were mediocre. I still can't bear the thought of getting anything less than an A, so if I can't be sure of success, I don't like to try a thing.

I kind of wish I hadn't let them test her. But I don't know if it would have made any difference. The more people tell her she's got talent, the less she believes it. She's even lost lucrative commissions because she can't do anything she thinks is good enough. I wish they'd just stop,  those people who compliment her. She's a fake and they should all realize it. Really, it's true. Anybody who doesn't work hard at their art--no matter what it is--won't be a rule-breaking, innovative ass-kicking artist. Talent is nice, but it's like a magician's left hand. It's hiding the real magic: the practice, the doing and the getting up the next day and doing it again. There are some things a mother can't fix. I can't fix that Stevie's talented and knowing that has put a wall between her and her art.

So much for my happy post!     

    

Written by narigonc Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

2:59:59 PM EDT
Hearing Melissa Etheridge

The robotripping saga of last weekend continued into the week. Here's more of the story I didn't tell in my last post. That Saturday night one of Stevie's friends snuck out about 2:00AM with several of the guys they'd been hanging out with the night before and all day. One of the guys ODed and another guy tried to rape him. (I don't have the whole story on that!) Stevie was spending the night with a Straight Edge friend, but got a call in the middle of the night saying the guy was ODing. She didn't know what to do, but somehow they decided to give him some Benedryl. After he ended up in the hospital later that day, the guy's mom called the friend's dad and that's when I got the call.

On Wednesday, Stevie's friend who snuck out to go to the park with the 19-year-old boys--and there seems to be an endless supply of underemployed 19-year-old MEN who want to hang out with girls years younger than themselves--anyway, the friend spent Wednesday evening calling people and telling them she was going to slit her wrists. When her various friends said, "No, you aren't going to do that. That's ridiculous," she did it just to prove she was serious.  She's in the hospital now or was last I heard.

What puzzles me is that none of the kids she called tried to call her parents or even to tell their own parents to raise the alarm. This girl has a history of being treated for threatening suicide and her legs are a road map of scars from cutting herself. I'm not sure what I would have done at that age though, so it's hard for me to judge. And certainly a couple of Stevie's friends have called feeling depressed and said they had nothing to live for and I didn't have them picked up by the men in white coats. I've always talked with them until they felt better, which usually takes about five minutes. They just want somebody to agree with them that being a teenager sucks. I tell them these are not the best years of their lives and remind them of the number of weeks until summer.

Stevie wasn't one of the friends who got the suicide call so I don't know if she would have told me or not. I berated her for not calling me (or her 22-year-old brother) about the boy who was ODing last Saturday night. I know they think they can and should handle things themselves. When I asked Stevie whether she would have alerted an adult if her friend had called, she said she's not a snitch. I said there's a difference between being a snitch and being a whistle-blower. I heard that on The View and it's true. When I was a teenager though, I wasn't a snitch either and there was no such thing as whistle-blowing and still maintaining your cool. If you don't have your friends' backs, nobody will have yours.

Would you have told?

Written by narigonc Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

12:11:00 AM EDT

I'm not sure how to start this entry. It's been nine months or so since I said anything significant here, so I'll start with the reasons I stopped writing. Mostly I stopped because Stevie was getting into so much trouble, I hated to write about it here. It felt disloyal to discuss her behavior unless I could make it funny or proud. She reads this blog. Possibly some of her friends do. And yet, I've felt guilty because all of what happens is part of her story of homeschooling until high school and then going to public high school.

And then once I got so far behind, it seemed like I would have to write a book to catch up--and I would. So I'll catch up a little at a time and try to stay current. And some things will have to remain hidden because I'm in the middle of a divorce that has turned nasty. I'd rather it hadn't, but I haven't chosen that direction. Because I know my pre-ex has a blog-crawling, wall-crawling girlfriend, I don't imagine this is a safe place to write certain joys or concerns about my life. I will update the best I can though and say that I'm in grad school these days working on my masters in English (comp/rhet).

Currently Stevie--the topic of this blog--is a sophomore in high school. Her grades this year have dropped and she's constantly on "grade watch." I finally started emailing her teachers every Friday to make sure she's done her homework for the week. She has hidden her progress reports and grade letters so we wouldn't know she was failing some of her classes and just doing very poorly in others (except art). Lest anybody say it's because she was homeschooled and can't keep up academically, bullshit. She got all A's on her midterms and yet got a D and an F and a bunch of C's for the quarter. Her grades reflect nothing but her refusal to do homework. Her classroom work is mostly A's as are her tests.

This does highlight a difference between homeschooling and public school. When we studied something here at home, the learning was what was important. If she understood it, we didn'tbeat it to death. We moved on. Now she has to do classwork, homework and tests on material that she knows already. She has to read novels slowly and then answer questions about what she read. It's frustrating for her. And yet, this is school and she chose school. It's the trade-off for having that wonderful social life that gets her in so much trouble.

And that trouble is why I stopped writing here. The day after my last entry on July 8, Stevie and I went to Virginia Tech for a week-long UU summer institute. (Yes, that Virginia Tech.) She stayed in the teen dorm. I had a room in another dorm. We both had a great time, although hers was better, I think. I had a moldy room that made me really sick most of the time we were there and my birthday passed in a rather lonely fashion. (OK, it was a fucking disaster, but who wants to hear me whine?)

Shortly after we got home, Stevie and a friend decided to get drunk while my partner and I were playing a gig at a birthday party. They took a fifth of rum down to a creek that runs under the interstate and drank it right down. When I got home, I went looking for her and found her in a condition I will not describe here. It was a long, terrible night that I spent sleeping for half an hour and then checking to make sure she was breathing or hadn't choked on her own puke. She did learn a lesson as far as I can tell though. We've had no repeats. That three-day hangover can seem like a month.

I also found out that night she'd smoked pot and had told a couple of my friends who decided to tell me now that it seemed like Stevie was getting out of control. I also caught her smoking cigarettes, a problem we've dealt with a few times since, but may have resolved for the time being.

She hasn't done anything I didn't expect her to do, really. She's experimented with all those things that kids do to be BadAss and then as she says, she's crossed them off her list of things she ever wants to do again. This past weekend while she was staying at her dad's ( at the mall really) she crossed robotripping off her list. Getting high on cold medicine with DXM in it. They even check the labels for the highest content of DXM. One of the 19-year-old guys she and her friends (all 15 and 16) were hanging out with ODed and had to go to the hospital. Stevie's dad dropped her off at home Sunday evening and 4 hours later an angry dad called me to tell me all about it. (Did I mention the custody battle? Yes, that's part of our lives too.)

It might seem like Stevie is acting out because of the stress of the divorce, but I don't think she'd be doing anything differently if we still believed in the fairy tale of our  perfect family life. She's going to try things. That's always been her promise to the world. After she got busted for robotripping (I feel so silly using that term), she asked me if I'd ever gotten high. I admitted to taking too much Contact when I was a teen to see if I'd get a buzz. And like Stevie, that wasn't such a pleasant high for me and I stopped doing it. I hope that's what Stevie does too.

What I've said here makes Stevie sound like a bad kid and she's not. She's a wonderful daughter and she'll grow up to have an interesting life. I can't blame her for experimenting and I hope she does it all while she's got the support of her family under her. I'm not sure what other experiments she has to cross off her list. I hope some of them are risky but not stupid--like the cold meds. I wish she'd take risks that are positive and not harmful, like submitting her art for publication or starting a band or writing a poem and reading it at a slam. Those kinds of risks are harder though and maybe too acceptable.

That's my update for tonight. I'll be better, I promise. I have a lot to say about the public school system--some good, some OMG bad. I haven't even updated you on the sex ed. situation from last year.

It's good to be back.

 

Written by narigonc Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 3 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

12:51:03 PM EDT

Characters: Stevie (see photo). Mom (forgettable middle-aged redhead).

Scene: In the van on our way home from a Passover seder in Cincinnati. We pass a storage unit facility with a display of lighted palm trees and fireworks.

Mom: That's really cool! I wonder when they put that up.

Stevie: Mom, it's always been there. You've seen it a hundred times.

Mom: Huh uh. I've never seen it before. We've driven by a thousand times and I've never seen it there.

Stevie (sighs heavily): Mom. It. Has. Always. Been. There.

Mom: When the Alzheimers gets bad, promise you'll take care of me.

Stevie (silence)

Mom: Promise you'll change my diapers. Don't let anybody else change my diapers.

Stevie: No.

Mom: I've changed thousands of your diapers. You won't change mine?

Stevie: No.

Mom: You're won't take care of your poor demented mom and change her diapers?

Stevie: No.

Mom: Will you help me kill myself then?

Stevie: Yes.

Written by narigonc Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 1 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

5:25:28 PM EDT I should not have let my dear readers believe that Stevie left her hair the color of fried chicken. The next day she dyed it again and now she looks like a sunflower. It really is a lovely--although shocking to those of us who know her--color. I wish my mom had let me dye my hair. I managed to sneak on some Sun In a couple of summers, but otherwise, I wasn't allowed to do that. I still don't know what the big deal was. Hair grows out. And can be dyed again. Oh well. Here's a couple of photos Stevie asked me to share. In spite of my pale attempts at humor, she couldn't look anything but beautiful if she tried.

Written by narigonc Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 1 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

5:09:53 PM EDT
Feeling Embarrassed

Stevie has changed her look. In an attempt to look like a trashy version of Billy Idol, she ended up with hair the color of fried chicken. This is the girl who whispers off-color remarks about girls with colorful stripes in their hair; bi- dye jobs she calls them.

So she's going around with a giant chicken foot sticking up out of her head. How lovely. She couldn't get into the van without bending her appendages. Love the hair. Really.

Just in case you'd like to copy her do, I'll tell you how it's done and share a few tips we've learned from experience. Dye your hair some wretched color that will never be found in nature. If you'd like the bi-polar look, add stripes of rainbow. Take big hunks and drench them in white glue. You'll need a quart for this particular look, but quantity depends on the length and breadth of your hair. Pull the hair into spikes. After they continue to fall down and deform and generally look like broken chicken fingers, find some narrow dowel rod and insert measured lengths into the spikes. Madly hold one after another up, grabbing the next falling spike until the glue dries and holds them through rigor mortis.

Be careful getting into the van. If riding in a car, make sure it has a sunroof. Don't allow the driver to close the sunroof until you're out of the car. Warn those who are with you to wear protective eyewear at all times. You will not be accustomed to the size of your own head any more.

To wash, soak your head in hot water for half an hour. Then take a shower until long after you've used up all the hot water and you can't stand the cold. Shampoo and style as you will. You've already gone around looking like you've got a chicken foot sticking out of your head. Whatever else you do will look normal and sane.

Written by narigonc Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 2 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

12:22:06 PM EDT
Feeling Surprised
Hearing A Love Song for Bobby Long soundtrack

If you haven't seen A Love Song for Bobby Long, watch it. It's on HBO these days. John Travolta is amazing with white hair and so Grayson Capp's music is divine. That's my plug for the day. I don't get paid for it.

Recently I learned a word--an acronym really--that I'd never heard before. Apparently everybody on the planet, including my exceptionally sheltered homeschooled kids and a tiny ancient grandmother living in the deepest part of the Amazon rainforest as well as political prisoners in Russian prisons, know of this acronym, but I'm just now learning of it. I'm sure anybody reading this has heard of it as well and will snort with juicy derision and painful disbelief that I have lived this many years and never heard of a MILF. I'm sure I've mentioned what a loser I am before.

I don't need to tell you what MILF means, right? Because you all know and you've all met many of them. They must be all over the place if they deserve their own widely recognized acronym. MILF.

Stevie's dad says they used that term when he was growing up. Now we grew up in small boring towns in Iowa just 40 miles apart, so we tend to speak the same language as much as Mars and Venus can. So I'm not only surprised that he knew that word when he was still wanking to the Sears catalog, but I happen to know that nobody in southwest Iowa--not even the horniest of teenage horndogs--nobody was talking about doing somebody's mom. Moms didn't do it in the 70s.

OK, there was The Graduate, but we all watched that because it was science fiction. Not that part about plastics. The part about the guy coming home from college and being seduced by a mom. Moms didn't do that, even in Hollywood. Not in the 70s. Moms weren't sexy until...oh, I don't know...maybe the late 80s. And then only Hollywood moms were sexy--Demi Moore...Yep, just Demi Moore. I think that let loose the floodgates on the sexy mom issue.

However, just because a mom is sexy, that doesn't mean her kids' friends should want to shag her. They should want her to drive them to soccer and make Kool-aid for them and kiss their boo boos, but not kiss their noodles or even their milk-mustached mouths. That's disgusting. (Note: That's "MILK" mustache not "MILF" mustache.)

Obviously, I'm not a MILF and I have no ambitions toward becoming one. I dye my hair to look younger, yes, but not that much younger. (Don't I wish!) My kids' friends expect me to stock the refrigerator and shock them with a well-rehearsed expletive, but they don't want to tap this.

And I have to ask, since you all know what a MILF is. Why aren't there FILFs? Can't dads be sexy?

Nevermind.

 

Written by narigonc Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 4 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

12:59:39 AM EDT
Hearing Dar Williams

After all those years of homeschooling, it seems weird now to have Stevie home during the day. I made her go to the gym with me. Yes, forced her. We had a discussion about this last week and she said I would have to force her because she wanted to go but when the time came, she knew she wouldn't want to. She conveniently doesn't remember saying that, but I do so it's all good. I'm the keeper of the memories.

We took Lauren, who lives around the corner and down the street and talks really fast. She wanted to go and they had fun working their abs and their hamstrings. Some old guy gave Lauren unwanted advice on the ab machine and then actually touched her stomach while she was working out. She had on a sport bra and shorts, so it was her bare stomach. I wish I'd been close enough to see it. I think somebody needed a good talking to. I can't believe any man can live over 70 years and not know to keep his hands to himself when it comes to 15-year-old girls. Next time we go, he'll have a 47-year-old mama bear watching his hands. Nobody fucks with my girls. Nobody. He'll find himself tied to a treadmill with Jerry Springer playing on the TV.

Another of Stevie's friends (the one who went to the circus with us) got out of the hospital over the weekend after spending two days there because she ODed. At first the rumor was that she'd taken too much Robitussin. (The taking of Robitussin for pleasure and not for coughs and congestion is called robitrippin'. I guess we did something similar in junior high when we sorted just the little white balls out of the cold capsules and took those. They were supposed to be the good stuff. Of course, now I'm an adult and I know it's really the little red balls...but I digress.) Turns out it wasn't the Robitussin. It was the Robitussin plus the vodka and the pot and the coke, but really it was the PCP that threw her over the limit and sent her to "you're so busted and going to rehab" land. Really I'm just assuming she'll get some help. Who really knows?

Yesterday Stevie spent the day with the old homeschool group crowd of teens. It was so good to see them. I didn't realize how much I'd missed seeing them (and their moms) every Wednesday afternoon until I looked in the bedroom where they were all hanging out and saw their faces. Funny thing is, many people would be more likely to think they'd be the robotrippers--the boys with their long hair, the girls pierced and dyed,the black eyeliner. Just goes to show how wrong assumptions can be. They're old enough they've gone their separate ways--jobs, college, high school. I hope Stevie sees more of them this summer and keeps those friendships in addition to the new ones at school.

I don't know how to tie in going to the gym with overdosing on PCP with homeschooling except to say that Stevie has an eclectic group of friends--from the robotrippers to the straight edge XxX to the homeschoolers. I always did too. I never wanted to be pegged into one group. Too limiting. Too predicable. Too boring.

Next time I really will tell the story about the girl giving birth on the living room floor.

Written by narigonc Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 5 comments: Show Recent | Add your own