Recently I've been thinking a lot about my childhood (specifically my early school years) because of the whole nationwide-homeschool thing going on. My mom homeschooled me and my four siblings for close to seven years because our school district was just a flat out nightmare for people who need special accommodations, such as myself and my siblings.
In a nutshell, my siblings and I all have severe food allergies and varying levels of anxiety, which the school district could not. Figure out. How to accommodate. Honestly. My poor mother. All she asked for was a table at lunch that could be designated as peanut free. It's a very reasonable request, right?
For interested parties, here is a (probably incomplete) list of all the crap my elementary school made us put up with:
Made me eat lunch in the library every day, by myself, instead of designating a peanut free table.
Told me to pick a table and tell everyone that they weren't allowed to eat peanuts there. I was in third grade. No self respecting fifth grader is gonna take orders from a third grader. Teachers don't understand the hierarchy.
Put an itty-bitty table in the corner of the lunch room next to the lunch line so I could eat alone in a corner while being stared at by the entire student body
Told me I could only choose one friend to sit at the table with me, then made me clean up their mess afterward
Made my sister sit on the floor in the corner to eat her lunch instead of giving her. A friggin. TABLE. ITS NOT. THAT DIFFICULT.
SHELLED PEANUTS. IN THE CLASSROOM. ON THE FLOOR. LIKE DO YOU PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND. IF I TOUCH THAT, I WILL DIE. LITERALLY DIE. NOT EXAGGERATING. MY THROAT WILL SWELL SHUT AND I WILL DIE FROM ASPHYXIATION DO YOU REALLY WANT THE DEATH OF A SECOND GRADER ON YOUR CONSCIENCE I DONT THINK YOU DO
My childhood bully used to chase me around the playground with peanut butter on her hands. I was afraid for my life. School did nothing.
There was also that one infamous year where the janitor got so fed up with kids using up all the soap in the bathrooms that he just up and decided to stop refilling the soap dispensers. In an elementary school. During cold and flu season. Use your imagination. I bet you can guess how that turned out. School didn't care. School district was pissed, though.
Basically my school was such a nightmare that I had to start getting counseling in third grade and had to be put on anxiety meds. That I'm still on to this day. So this went on until I was in seventh grade (I'm not even going to get into the torture that was middle school). Halfway through seventh grade my mom pulled me and my two siblings who were currently in school out and began homeschooling us. For seven years. Like the superhero she is.
My two youngest siblings didn't step foot in a public school until we moved, and even then my mom wouldn't put them in an actual public school, she found a charter school that my aunt had enrolled her kids in so it was vetted already. It's amazing. I worked there for a like a week before the school district shut down. I wish I went to that school growing up.
So in all actuality I never went to public high school, except for one class in tenth grade, which was choir. I think the whole point of this was to say that people who homeschool are actual legitimate superheroes, it just took a while (and a lot of digressing) to get to the conclusion. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I think. If for some strange reason anyone wants to chat about food allergies or sucky school stories feel free to send an ask or something. I've got lots more stories to tell.
