It's not as lonesome as you would think. Our mom would meet up with other "homeschool moms" (their phrase, not mine. I'm not that lame.) to form clubs and other things to trick us into thinking we were normal kids. We had a bowling league, a 4-H club, a special day reserved at Roll-A-Bout, Quiz Bowl, Battle of the Books, science club, plays, and Food Fairs, but my absolute favorite day of all was Library Day (known elsewhere as "Thursday").
At the risk of sounding like a complete nerd, my library was. The. Shit. All other libraries can suck it. If I could still go their storytime hour without being the creepiest person there, I so totally would. I've considered renting a kid so I could pretend to just be a loving parent who's really into kids' books. What's abnormal about that?
In the enormous children's section, there was a tub of weirdly-shaped plastic block things. These were perfect for weapons because Dray and I always had to play Power Rangers with our friends, embarrass our moms, and disturb the peace as much as possible. We used the slanted display shelf of books as the Command Center and from there went on our missions, which consisted of screaming "Hiii-ya! UNH!" and kicking as high as we could at the guy playing the monster,. We were always highly successful, especially me because I was the fabled Pink Ranger and the only girl, which obviously equals badassness. Not every girl raised in the '90s could say she rescued a fake Angel Grove from a fake Lord Zed without even wrinkling her floral overall-shorts, ya know.
The library computers only had one game, and it was a Magic School Bus game that loaded as fast as a top-of-the-line computer from 1994 would let it. Meaning, I slammed the mouse in frustration and banged all the buttons on the keyboard at least every three minutes. I've never been very patient. I desperately wanted to help the bespectacled ginger kid leap his way further into space one platform at a time while collecting coins, but I failed him repeatedly until I was forced to leave him and stop harming the computers with my uncontrollable brat-rage.
Every year the library had a summer reading contest for kids to promote staying literary even when school was out, or something. They had a different theme each year and all the kids were given construction paper cutouts of symbols that went with that theme. These had their names written on them and were tacked to the humongous floor-to-ceiling bulletin board in the children's room, and for every 100 pages each kid read they'd get a sticker on it. Well, I thought this was an incredible idea because I liked reading, winning, and everyone knowing that I'm winning at reading. I devoted every hour of my waking life to reading and getting so many precious stickers that I had to get multiple paper baseballs or whatever to hold all my shining tokens of accomplishment and awesomeness. I was so amazingly literary, all the other kids wished they could be homeschooled too instead of being stuck in their classrooms, not being best friends with their brothers or covered in stickers and chrome nail polish.
Once I reached a certain age, damaged all the computers, read all the books I cared about, won the summer reading contest so many times I grew bored with it, and saved Angel Grove from as many attacks as my high-kicks were able to, it was time for me to graduate from my beloved children's room and move to the small alcove for "young adults." Here I spent hours puzzling over the twins of Sweet Valley High, wondering what sex was and if I'd ever have boobs. I had never known there was more to teenagerness than what was illustrated in The Babysitters Club books, and all the new information was pretty frightening to a girl who still wore braided pigtails with dragonfly barrettes.
I was delighted, however, that some of the books in this section couldn't be finished before I left, even when my mom's gossipiest friends were sitting with her. I started taking home huge stacks of random books, unsure of what genre I would like now that I was part of this mysterious club, "young adults." I adored murder mysteries immediately, except when I couldn't sleep because a masked man with a rusty screwdriver was lurking in my closet behind my velour highwater bellbottoms. Time travel, space travel, reincarnation, telekinesis, aliens, demons, ghosts, magic, secret worlds -- anything that seemed impossible enchanted my young adult mind because I wanted there to be more to life than Asheboro, Family Matters, and wanting pizza for dinner.
I never completely grew out of that phase.
Because I wasn't quite enough of a nerd as my dad would have liked, he taught me how to play chess, and once I mastered it I would challenge kids at the library. Sitting at a table with the board set up in front of me, my feet dangling above the ground, I would grin evilly through my straight-across-the-forehead bangs at passing children. Most of them would walk away from my glare quaking in intimidation, or perhaps hurtful laughter. After each game, I would shake my opponent's hand, nod wisely, and solemnly declare, "good game" just like my dad taught me. Because nobody likes a sore winner. Then whoever I had crushed would stumble away crying and never show their face at the Asheboro Public Library again.
Nobody ever would have guessed I'd be a college dropout. Kids with a sick amount of stickers and chess victories like I had almost always end up graduating from Harvard, not dropping out of the community college.
Without all the library time I was exposed to in addition to being homeschooled, I doubt I would have become so delightful, classy, charming, well-educated, accomplished, competitive, literary, and respectful. There's eight adjectives that describe a noun (me), and I'm not waiting on you to catch up.
