8:00 a.m.: Wake up before everyone and SHUT YOUR CLOCK UP OR ELSE.
8:30 a.m.: Lost in Space reruns while eating Rice Krispies.
9:30 a.m.: Math for an hour. Maybe a chapter in one of those logic puzzle books with the grids. I loved puzzles, and Mom said they counted.
10:00 a.m.: AMC movie, hopefully a historical one for studying history, hopefully Technicolor, hopefully Oklahoma! If not Oklahoma!, 50 percent chance of watching VHS tape of Oklahoma!. Or a Cary Grant movie. Half-ass read chapter in history book while watching said movie. CHECK!
12:00 p.m.: Family time! Lunch out at restaurant, one of four that saw us so frequently, they kept a table reserved for us. No one ever questioned why we weren’t in school. Thanks, society!
2:00 p.m.: Study Latin because Mom thinks it sounds good to tell people we are learning Latin. Most of the time, read Perry Mason book instead, for “literature.”
2:30 to 8:00 p.m.: Geisha lessons.
8:00 to 10:00 p.m.: More movies or TV (especially kung-fu movies for PE) while eating either tuna casserole or manicotti (the only two items my mother cooked) or a microwave TV dinner (the one with the postmodern square desserts).
10:00 to 11:00 p.m.: More reading, video games, or maybe some Legos. For my brain-shape skills.
After 11:00 p.m.: Eh. Go to bed whenever.
[?Socialization, Maybe? No? Okay!?]
Since everyone we met always brought up “What about their socialization skills?” like naggy in-laws, my mom tried to find us like-minded people to hang out with. Problem was, our family’s minds weren’t like any others. Especially in southern Mississippi.
My brother and I tried to hang out with other homeschooled kids a few times, but in the ass crack of the Bible Belt, parents who kept their kids home were not going to intersect with our liberal points of view. Ever.
At one awkward meet-up, I was hanging out with a girl around my age on the playground. She was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and an overdress down to her ankles. I kid you not; she looked like a Pilgrim, and her name was Eunice.
I made the first move. Because socialization beggars can’t be choosers. “What books do you read?”
“The Bible.”
“Have you read A Wrinkle in Time? Or Perry Mason, The Case of the Fan Dancer’s Horse?”
“No. We only read the Bible.”
“Oh. You’re a Thumper.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Wanna swing?”
“I can’t. I might show my ankles.”
I laughed because I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.
After that, my brother and I were in agreement: being alone was better than hanging around those homeschooled weirdos.
So I didn’t spend much time with other children as a kid. SURPRISE! I actually can’t name one best friend I had during those years outside of a group lesson situation. But it’s human instinct to connect, and eventually I found someone who would listen to me no matter how weird I was: my little pink diary.
I called myself Leesie as a kid because I guess my family couldn’t think of a more unattractive nickname. Oh wait. My grandpa called me Pooch. That one I won’t embrace in print.
But the way I wrote to this diary, you’d think I was writing on the mirror to another little girl who existed on the other side of the page.
“Dear Diary, it’s been a month since I wrote. I know, I’m a bad friend.”
“. . . I finished the Emily of New Moon books this week, but I mustn’t bore you.”
“Today’s our first anniversary. Happy Birthday to us!”
I confided everything a weird sixth-grader would share with other children and definitely be rejected for in a typical school situation. Big dreams like, “Wouldn’t it be neat to go back to 1880 and there wasn’t any kidnappers and progress, and the streams and fields and everything were beautiful?”
I made super-serious vows in the margins, like, “Vow: I will never kill an animal if I can help it.” “Vow: I will never marry a man for money.” “Vow: I will never let my children live in a slum.” Real personality-congealing self-work.
My mom was a big political activist, and that rubbed off on me in a big way, too. The diary is awash in bold political statements and social consciousness.
“We have a new president. George Bush and Dennis the Menace for vice president.”
Most of all, the diary was a safe zone. A place where I could share my innermost thoughts, work out a semblance of an identity, analyze my likes and dislikes, and work through my relationships, like that with my brother, Ryon, in a thoughtful, mature way.
That little pink diary is a tome for the ages.
My mother wasn’t totally blind to the fact that we needed exposure to other kids. She made efforts. But none of them seemed to stick. Probably because my attitude toward other children was like a seventy-year-old spinster’s.