Yup. The Money Burning Incident of 1985 got me yanked out of school completely. Oops.
I briefly got put into another school that was into “unschooling.” I can’t remember much about that place except it closed abruptly and stole all our money. Adult problems. At the same time, my dad got orders to move from Huntsville, Alabama, to the Deeper South—Biloxi, Mississippi—to finish his medical training for the military. And that’s when the shit hit my educational fan.
To most of you outside the Deep South, Alabama or Mississippi? It’s the same. I mean, they’re ass-to-ass anyway. Might as well combine them and make a super hick state, right? But to my Southern extended family, it was bad. They thought we were moving to an antebellum wasteland. My dad was a Yankee himself, so he was even more concerned. (Everyone north of Kentucky was referred to as a Yankee in my mom’s family. It took me years to realize that wasn’t official.)
There wasn’t a tradition in our family to homeschool, but there was a tradition to get super-mega educated, especially on my mom’s side. My grandfather had a PhD in nuclear physics and a thick Southern drawl like molasses. He would invent a desalination machine one week and chew out anyone who distracted him from his favorite Nashville sketch show, Hee Haw, the next. “Get outta there, Pooch! You’re blockin’ Skeeter Davis!”
My grandmother is a scientist, too, and a nurse and an artist and . . . I’ll be honest, kinda scary. She once found a dead owl on the side of the road and put it in the back of her pickup in order to analyze the skeleton after it decomposed. I mean, that’s kind of Beth Henley interesting behavior, but seeing a dead owl in the back of a pickup is super creepy when you’re seven years old, guys. Because you start to suspect that if it were legal, Grandma would do the same thing with your corpse, too.
In order to keep the brain legacy up, my mom scrambled to find schooling options for me and my brother before we moved, but the Gulf Coast of Mississippi didn’t have much to choose from. In fact, it had one of the worst education systems in the country, and the only secular private school in the area was a place that made kids wear uniforms, which Mom considered fascist. So we were in a quandary. And because my dad was working twenty-eight hours a day to become a surgeon (scrubs were the only thing I saw him in from the age of eight on), it was up to my mom to figure out an alternative.
So, in a natural leap, she decided to Bob-Vila-DIY our educations herself.
[?Home Is Where . . . It All Is!?]
In retrospect—and not to be mean to anyone who parented me—it doesn’t seem like there was a clear plan going into the whole homeschooling thing. At first, the idea was to follow a comprehensive third-grade curriculum that my mom sent off for in the mail, 1-800 style. It was a system missionary families used when they took their children abroad, and I was a fan of that idea, because it seemed super romantic. I’d always dreamed about traveling overseas on a ship like the Titanic, and missionaries seemed tragic and special (not like dumb Ms. Rosemary).
Also, homeschooling seemed like something an orphan would do, and I really wanted to be an orphan. Because let’s be real: they have it so good in kids’ literature! They’re sad but special, people love them against all odds, and they’re always guaranteed a destiny of greatness. The Secret Garden, The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter? Orphanhood was a bucket list item for me! Along with being able to communicate telepathically with my dog. Based on the loose association of “no school” and “no parents,” I was pro-homeschooling. Without understanding what the hell it really was.
On the first day of my new educational life, several boxes of books arrived at our house. Weirdly, all the texts were designed the same, with the words “Science” and “Math” on the covers, like boxes on a generic food aisle.
Despite the weirdo curriculum, I was psyched. And so was my mom.
“You guys ready to learn outside the box?” She lifted up the thick “teaching manual” that she was supposed to use daily. (I don’t think it ever got its spine cracked.)
“Yeah!” My brother, Ryon, and I jumped up and down, way too excited, like we were in the audience for a Nickelodeon show. We were ready! Screw the establishment! We were learning on our own!