The Deviated Septuagenerian: Memoirs, Daydreams, and Refractions

“No one kidnapped and blindfolded you! You should resign from the forum!”

Sheesh, some people can’t take a joke.

Our homeschooled kids didn’t fit with the crowd that does so for religious reasons—the majority of homeschoolers—so our son and daughter were isolated from most homeschooled children. During their preteen years, their friends came from the neighborhood and from our Aikido dojo. Our son, Adam, was content to spend his spare time online or solo-waring in his tabletop and computer games. Our more socially inclined daughter, Bria, was impatient for her neighborhood friends to return from school.

Bria’s life would soon improve. A teacher in our school district had a plan to open an online resource center to serve homeschooled students. While the original name “Cyberschool” survived for years, parents (not us) demanded in-person classes with schoolteachers.¹ Over the next half-dozen years, the district moved us to a series of abandoned school plants.

Out with the old

After we were moved to the third abandoned school, the district renamed the resource center—wait for it—the Edmonds Homeschool Resource Center (EHRC). Once the building relic was cleaned and checked for zombies, the school district installed a new principal who, conflict avoidant, immediately offloaded his authority so he could devote his time to shuffling papers. In the authority vacuum, a parent committee was formed by the type of parents who form parent committees. First task: create a rules and regulations handbook. While in the right context, rules and regulations may be necessary, in the wrong context, rule makers must manufacture their reason for existence.

EHRC was a wink-wink, win-win agreement for the school district to reacquire school funds previously lost due to children not enrolled in traditional schools. All that was officially required at Cyberschool was for parents to meet Washington State law by filing an intent to homeschool and for a parent to meet with a supervising teacher once a semester to go over the child’s learning plan. The plan could include classes at EHRC, lessons at home, and contracted instruction as we did for martial arts classes.

This setup worked for our two children, who were able to satisfy their world language requirements to apply for college and worked especially for Bria, who continued for years enjoying Spanish language, American Sign Language, and musical theatre.

The EHRC plant was a ten-minute bus ride from our home; their time away from home gave Bria and her older brother respite from their parents' direct supervision. After Adam satisfied his world language requirement, he attended EHRC only to teach a computer programming class. That meant Bria traveled to EHRC on her own.

Mean girls

I want to be in the club that won’t have me as a member.
—Not Groucho Marx

All was fine until the parent committee discovered their cause: stretch their authority to other homeschooled children and their parents and enter the cool kids clubhouse they were shut out of in their school days. Finally, we’re the mean girls.

While the parents who nested in the EHRC gym all day were now the cool kids, there had to be uncool kids because every in-group requires an out-group. The parents who didn’t nest in the EHRC gym all day were dubbed the “drop-off parents.”

To corral the drop-off parents, the parent committee established a rule that children under 16 must have a parent present to supervise. This would affect 14-year–old Bria as well as me, so I created an online forum to actively oppose the new rule. Today, most would start a Facebook group, but this preceded Facebook and other popular social media. I chose forum software and installed it on a hosting service.

EHRC had no digital record of parents' email accounts, so I manually copied about 80 EHRC family accounts from a paper listing, a chore for this lousy typist. I invited parents, teachers, and the Principal to join. I included a manifesto with two major points. First, I stated that I did not recognize the authority of the committee; only the Principal and the Assistant Superintendent of the district had authority over EHRC. Second, nearly all the support staff who worked at EHRC were parents of the attending children. (They created and took jobs at EHRC without an official district process.) These parents claimed they were following the new rules by being present, but I contended that they could not claim to be supervising their children while being paid by the school district. I added (well, threatened) that I would schedule an appointment with the Assistant Superintendent to discuss the matter.²

I was pleased with the participation in the forum. Teachers as well as parents posted, and both sides were represented. To set a tone, I made it clear that if “drop-off” parents was used as a slur, I would counter with “hang-around” parents.

The spy who didn’t love me

Because I like to have fun when I write, on the forum, I posted a story inspired by the then popular TV series, Alias, starring Jennifer Garner as a spy who wears stylish clothing while kicking ass—the usual for women spies. I wrote that I was blindfolded and kidnapped by members of the parents' committee. Everyone took it with the humor intended, except for one participant who angrily insisted I resign from the forum. I gently pointed out that it was my forum and suggested that he or anyone else were welcome to create their own forum. Other than him, all were cordial to me in the forum and later in an all-hands meeting at the school.

In-groups and out-groups

No matter how old or accomplished we eventually become, we carry our childhoods with us.³ Many whose egos were injured because they weren’t one of the cool kids in their school days will never give up the pursuit.

School is the typical place to encounter mean girls (a generic term for any who form exclusive in-groups and bully manufactured out-groups), but even families have in-groups and out-groups.⁴ That’s for part two: Mean Boys.