The Early Years, Part One

Right... the life of a homeschooler turned academic extraordinaire (I am being totally facetious about the 'extraordinaire' bit, at least for now):

So, I told you why, or at least some reasons why. Now, I tell you about the early years. Interestingly enough, I was v. different from the stereotypical homeschooler for a number of reasons. Most people think of homeschooling families as having a vanload of kids, with a father who works and a mother who stays at home and wears scary jeans jumpers. Homeschoolers are thought to live in rural areas, secluded from other families, and with kids who have little interaction beyond their own family. Well, my experience was different in that 1) It was only my sister and I, I didn't have any other siblings; 2) My mother worked until I was twelve, and she would have kepted working if her job hadn't been abolished and it hadn't been so hard for her to find another hospital lab supporting multiple phlebotomists and medical technologists (after the early-1990's, many hospitals started exporting their labwork to big companies, rather than maintaining their own labs); 3) We lived in a rural area, but the town is only 30 minutes from the state capital and other major cities. We were *never* secluded from other families, but were involved in a slew of extracurricular activities where I made a *lot* of friends, including piano and violin and voice lessons, church activities, competitive synchronized swimming team, Girl Scouts, 4-H clubs, homeschooling co-ops and other events, drama clubs, soccer team, book discussion groups, and much more. I had a birthday party every year, and it was difficult to par the friends list down to the minimum of 10 people!

Oh, and my mother *never* wore any kind of jeans jumper!! :)