I love to host parties. Last year, I had one for National Pie Day. I wanted to have one when David was able to start taking Humira, but David didn’t really think it would be fun to have people watch as he gave himself the first injection. I had planned a cake shaped like the Humira pen and everything.

I only go into Paperie & Co. if David is up for me having a party. I have NEVER gone in there without buying invitations and hosting a party. Once I bought a dress and didn’t have any place to where it so I threw a party.

But the craziest party I ever had was when I was thirteen. I threw a funeral for summer. Yes, I hosted a funeral. I did NOT want to go back to school. I hated my middle school years. Hate is a strong word, and it’s a strong emotion, as David likes to say.

What does it say about me that my teenage angst fueled parties instead of dying my hair?

I dressed in black and wore a widow’s veil. I invited my friends and their parents over as well as family and neighbors. We started by burying a summer time capsule with ticket stubs and pictures of all the fun things we’d done that summer. My brothers and their friends did a cap gun salute and buried the box. Two neighbor ladies sang Amazing Grace.

Then we had a wake. It was fabulous. Everyone brought a dish and we had an awesome pool party.

And yeah, I had to go to school the next day. My parents were so great to let me have that party. The next year they let me homeschool.

Hmm…maybe when David is feeling really well he’ll let me have a remission party…

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I attended public school from 1st – 8th grade. Kindergarden wasn’t mandatory (Maybe it still isn’t?) and I was already reading and counting money, etc. so I was homeschooled for kindergarden. My mother said that she would never homeschool because she wanted us to be salt and light. We lived in a very small town North of Dallas. (Think Audie Murphy for those of you history buffs.) The school system there was great. There was one elementary, one middle school and one high school all on the same campus. On Friday afternoons during football season the entire school system gathered in the high school gym (yes, we all fit) for pep rallies. I lived next door to my second grade teacher. The playground at that tiny school was so much nicer than any I’ve seen here in Dallas.

Then for six weeks during third grade we lived with my grandmother because our old house had sold, and our new house was still being built. During those six weeks of homeschooling two out of four children, my mother decided she would never homeschool because my father would come home one night and we’d all have killed each other.

My partial third grade school year in a new school system was rough. Things were done very differently. At the tiny school I’d previously attended, if you didn’t finish your work, you took it home to finish it. My new third grade teacher screamed at me for taking work home to finish it. “How dare you!” Also, for some unknown reason my new class had a very late lunch. I literally thought I was going to collapse some days because I was so hungry. It was in that way that I learned how to hide food in my mouth. You see, we only had a few minutes to eat our lunch. When time was up, you’d better stop eating or the lunch room monitor would scream at you. After lunch was recess, so I learned to stuff whole fruit roll ups or entire Little Debbies into my mouth, hold my mouth very still while walking through the hall, and then chew once I got outside.

Fourth grade my parents put me in a different public school. It was a better school and a better year. Fifth grade was awful.

And then middle school. First of all, everyone is awkward and insecure and changing in middle school. I was no exception. But, the lack of common sense at this middle school was appalling. One teacher yelled at me for having an orthodonist appointment. They wouldn’t stock toilet paper in the restrooms because some students “wrapped” the bathrooms. You know, like kids wrap houses in toilet paper. With that logic, students shouldn’t have desks either, because some students write on desks.

I got kicked out of gym class. My gym teacher was playing music with inappropriate language, and I complained to him. So he put on Marilyn Manson and asked if that was better. Later, that same gym teacher had us run over three Hispanic boys. These three boys had been being rude and disrespectful. They deserved some consequence. But when I say run over, I mean, they lay on the gym floor and the rest of the class ran laps in the gym stepping on them as we ran. I went home and told my parents what had happened. My mother went with me to talk to the principal. We explained that I was especially concerned because I thought that perhaps, those boys parents might not speak English well enough to stand up for their sons. My principal told me, “Well, Coach didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.” The next day, Coach asked me to transfer out of his class. Yup. That’s right. I’m the one they punished.

Another part of the problem I had with public school was teaching to the test. Texas standardized testing was a joke back then. I was bored out of mind half the time while teachers went over the mandatory TAAS worksheets and practice tests. Teachers are required to spend so many minutes each day going over the standardized test. We’d have classes where we did nothing but learn how to take this one test. Stuff like when you don’t know the answer, pick B or C. Oh, and it drove me crazy when they’d have us do reading comprehension worksheets. If I got every answer right, but I didn’t show my work I’d get points taken off. How do you show your work in reading comprehension? They had a system where after you read the passage, you read a question, then you’d go back to the passage and underline the answer. We were so busy practicing all year for a test that was only two days a year that we never learned much.

In seventh grade, we took the science portion of the TAAS. One of my friends was wearing a digital watch. We received our tests at the same time, and she timed us. In sixty seconds, we both answered 100 questions and got 100% correct. One of the questions was, “Look at this picture of a thermometer. What temperature does it show?” The picture clearly showed a reading of 90 degrees. Shouldn’t we be a little bit beyond reading a thermometer?

In eighth grade science, we spent six weeks deboning chicken and using the bones to build a model of a dinosaur skeleton. Six weeks.

I began begging my parents to let me be homeschooled. I’m such a rebel. Stickin’ it to the man because I want toilet paper in the bathrooms. Really, the whole atmosphere and value system at that middle school was a problem. I pleaded and worked on them for months. My final essay for 8th grade pre-AP English was a persuasive essay. The way they taught us to write was absurd. There was a very strict formula. Four sentances to a paragraph. State, explain, elaborate, proof. For the proof part, we made up statistics and quotes. That’s not exactly how writing works in the real world. But I digress. Back to the persuasive essay. We got to pick the topic, so I wrote an essay trying to persuade my parents to let me be homeschooled. I guess it worked, because they finally relented.

I was homeschooled for high school. The first year I did Abeka video school. The next year I did Abeka, but I only used the videos for math and Spanish. I had neighborhood friends, and I was really active with our church youth group, so I got plenty of socialization. I even went to prom. My freshman year, two homeschool moms started the Christian Homeschool Prom. I went all four years. It was so much fun! It’s always funny to tell people that my parents got me a hotel room for prom. I’d get ready in the room while Mom was decorating. After prom, I’d crash in the hotel room with my parents and brothers.

My high school graduation was really neat. My brother led everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance. My cousin sang the National Anthem. My father spoke. It was really fun. Yes, I took the SAT. Yes, I really graduated. I had all the required credits necessary to graduate.

Middle school was rough for me. I am so grateful that my parents allowed me to homeschool. My brothers graduated from public high school. They did really well in public school.

I have no idea if I will homeschool my children. To quote my mother, “Every child, every situation is different.” Some public schools are fine. Some parents sacrifice a lot to send their children to private school. Some kids write essays begging to be homeschooled!

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