Some times the things we don't realize are blessings at the time end up being some of the most important events in our life. They're path changers. Forks in the roads. Speed bumps so big they threw us onto another street. And often times that's what it feels like too, a kick in the rear.
Half way through fifth grade my family had to move. The rental house that we had lived in, the one right across the street from my elementary school, was being sold. I had been attending this elementary school since half way through first grade and I had friends, buddies, boys that I had known for years that I like to beat at wall ball and math. It was a decent school and I was finally inside the building for class. I had waited years to be a big kid.
(Fifth and Sixth grade were in the actual school building, they had lockers and a warm hallway. The other grades opened to the outside and you had to travel across the courtyard to reach the music room, the library, the office and the lunch room.)
But all that didn't matter. I had to tell my teachers and friends I was moving, pack up my room, sit in the trees in my yard one last time. The trees that I would spend hours in. Sitting in their big, beautiful branches reading books, or playing pretend or waiting for Mom to get home from the grocery store because I was so high up I could see the road she would be driving on.
It was change and I thought not such a great one, especially when we had to move to a completely different town to find an affordable rental house. My Dad's commute was now longer and we would have to ride a bus to school, instead of just walking across the street.
Next to our house, right across the road and then a small field was a railroad track. That night in our new house, Dad laid all our mattresses on the living room floor, since he hadn't had time to put the beds together. It was strange, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the new house. Watching the odd shadows play on the walls. And then, the Amtrak train, traveling at around eighty miles per hour, rumbled past our house. The windows shook, my mattress vibrated and the sound roared loudly in the ears. My parents sighed and I knew they were just as unhappy about the move as us kids were.
The schools in this district were divided differently than my last school. Fifth through eighth grades were in middle school. Suddenly I went from being an elementary student to being a middle schooler. Yikes. My fifth grade teacher was crazy. She had a metal stool she liked to pick up and smack against the linoleum when ever she was upset with us, which was just about every day.
We had gangs in the school, luckily not into a lot of on-campus violence but there was more than enough vandalism, thievery, and bullying to keep the school in a constant state of tension, fear, and anger.
By sixth grade, the battle field lines were drawn between the girls, you were either on one side and popular or you were on the other side and clearly not popular. I made things complicated by being friends with JD,one of the popular girls at the same time while also being considered teacher's pet because I enjoyed school.
This wasn't an ideal situation and pretty soon JD wasn't my friend and I was deemed an easy target by the other girls. I was still a kid in sixth grade and not ready for the 'Mean Girl' environment. I only had one bad teacher in sixth grade, he came to school high on something and unable to teach math. We scrapped by just enough to count for test scores.
By seventh grade I had a knot in my stomach every day before school. I had an hour bus ride in the morning and whereas I had a funny bus driver, his jokes were highly inappropriate and dirty. On top of the way he would flirt with the high school girls, it was not a great bus ride. My brother would get on the bus with me but he had to stay on longer than I did and was picked on horribly as soon as I wasn't there to protect him. In school he was losing ground in math and my sister was being taught that you can spell a word any way you want and it's correct.
The girls were horribly cruel to each other and all the jokes were demeaning and heartless. The P.E. teachers were sadistic if you weren't athletic and my science teacher would threaten to kill us and stuff us in the cupboards if we didn't behave.
It was not an ideal learning environment. And probably not even that safe.
So I suggested to my parents that they should home school me. A couple of weeks later, when the situation had reached a boiling point for all of us siblings, they decided to take us out of school and do it at home. I'm not sure if my siblings were in full agreement, my brother didn't like school no matter where it was and my sister liked being around other kids. But the school district had failed us in so many ways and we couldn't transfer some where else.
Home schooling was easy for me. I was already a good student, it wasn't any different at home except it only took about three hours a day to finish my work. What kid doesn't mind being done in less than half the time as before? We took field trips, studied things that were important and interesting, my Mom read Mark Twain to us, I read the other classics, and we volunteered at quite a few places to interact with people and the world. I wasn't stuck in Middle School Hell anymore, I was out in the real world and it was wonderful.
I didn't even wake up with a stomach ache anymore.
I had freedom to be myself. I had time to think, to learn, to feel safe. I still had friends, but I didn't have bullies.
At the end of that year I was testing beyond the high school level. The person administering the test suggested I skip high school and move right into college. I didn't because I wasn't ready emotionally for such a huge step but it was a confidence boost for my parents.
They took us out of school and took on the task of being our teachers. Especially my Mom. She didn't have a background in teaching but she was going to take that leap of faith and cross her fingers that it worked because she knew we couldn't stay at the schools we were going to.
It took courage and faith. And sometimes in life we have to take that leap. Sort of like Indiana Jones when he has to cross the bridge except he can't actually see it...he just has to have faith that it is there.
We can make all the plans we want but when it comes down to it, sometimes the best things are the changes we make with nothing more to guarantee that we're on the right path than our faith.
That's a tough one to follow but I'm sure glad my Mom did.
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