LIVING UNDER GLASS: A SUMMARY OF MY HOMESCHOOL YEARS

Life Story Cartoon Posted December 4, 2019


Hoo boy!



What I have here is a folder from my fourth grade home school year. It's a capsule from a more sheltered time in my life. Considering the number of times I've moved and what all I've been through since then, being able to see this now is something of a minor miracle.

Let's start with the cover. I was obsessed with stickers, and I remember getting them when I did well enough on any given assignment. It felt validating. Seeing these space-themed stickers and how shiny they were, however, was like an out-of-body experience.


I liked writing in a futuristic style for some reason. I must have been really excited about the turn of the millennium.




Yeah, I watched NASCAR once. Never again.



According to my ten-year old self, the most important things to me were good food (who doesn't like a nice meal?), my computer (LOL, so "millennial" of me), money, family, and racing (I think I put that there because Pokémon wasn't an acceptable answer).


Summit County seperates the corn from the industrial wastelands.




I think I mashed my entire navy blue crayon into Alaska.



Much of my homework pertained to writing, which is how I became good at it. I was also required to write in cursive, which was the bane of my existence. There's some art in here, and I think this is supposed to be Paul and Silas in jail?


I don't see it.



I had the Glorlier's Multimedia Encyclopedia on CD-ROM, but if I was feeling brave enough, my parents would connect me to information superhighway known as the internet. Hearing those words "You've got mail" also felt validating.


It took nearly ten minutes to print something like this.



My home school experience still very much felt like public schooling, but it had several advantages. Instead of a large classroom setting, my parents taught in the comfort of their own dining room. Instead of playing on the playground, we would walk a Metro Park trail. Instead of questionable State-mandated food choices, we had lovely home cooked meals.


I had anxiety issues, even back then...



I was home schooled from 1997 to 2001, third through seventh grade. My parents intended to keep me all the way through high school, but this proved to be impractical. Homeschooling costs a surprising amount of time and money, and my family was usually short on both of these things. My father took on extra work just so my mother had time to teach, but the burden became too much. My parents ended up divorcing, and I soon found myself back in public schools. I was left with one question -- why go through so much trouble to keep me home schooled?

It didn't take long to find my answer. Within a week, I was ridiculed heavily for believing mankind didn't evolve from apes, and that this nation was founded on Biblical principles. Within two weeks, I seen those horrific orange and black blooms impacting the World Trade Center. I was thrusted into a whole different world -- a world where staying sexually pure, going to church, and thanking God for your blessings were no longer basic standards of human decency. Such things have become acts of defiance against our society's experiment in sexual revolution, subjectivity worship, and hatred toward anything that honors God.

My parents did everything they could to protect me against Satan's attacks, and that's what you should do for your children. I'm not necessarily saying we all should home school, and I'm not saying every public school believes that "genitals don't define gender" and "people with vulvas can be boys." But I am saying to resist the devil no matter what. Stay married. Be faithful to your spouse. Continue to serve at your church. Raise your boys and girls to be men and women respectively. For the glory of God and the good of man, keep resisting.

It doesn't get more validating than to hear God say, "Well done."

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