Careful control

Anyway, isn't it scary meeting people you never met before?

Meeting new people scares me. Maybe I am a social phobic. Or maybe I have a lot of experience. I mean, some of those home ed types are pretty far-out wacko gone crazy. I believe some of them knit with their own hair. And store their child's milk teeth in cardboard boxes in the kitchen cupboards. Like, just in case the kids need them back one day? What if the baby teeth mix up with the sugar lumps when the vicar calls for tea? What happens then?

Anyway, I have wide experience in meeting a lot of people. From all over. From a big wide social divide, top to bottom, right to left.

It never gets any less scary for me, meeting new people for the first time. And those home ed types? What if they have two heads? What if they come at me, all crystals and flowers, Hello, my name is Woman Moon Blood Womb. Or what if they are fifty smiling teeth with the opening line, Have you repented and let baby Jesus sing in your heart?

You never can tell. Not in this world. So maybe I am right to be cautious.

And it's so unfair! I mean, in normal life, meeting a lot of very different people would show you how home educated children live in society all the time, right? But it doesn't seem to work like that. In the popular press, wide social contact merely proves how dysfunctional are home educating families. Because we don't send our kids to sit with the same 29 other kids all day long every day for five years? We'd rather meet hundreds of different people in many different places. For that, we're labelled the weird ones.

Anyway, some of us are. I mean, some of them are. Weird. I'm normal. And I find it incredibly scary meeting new people.

Like today. We're meeting new people. Home educators. New people in the home schooling community. For the Not Back to School Picnic.

You school people won't know about this underground tradition. It's part of what happens on the other side. In the world of the matrix where the weird people live. We home educators all come together and celebrate not going back to school. Keep your eyes open. You might see a crowd of kids on a beach, in a museum, playing in a park, in a field. We're there, and this is our community. Rotting your community from the inside. If you believe the negative press.

Anyway, you can tell I'm nervous.

I tend to repeat myself a lot. And ramble. The words come out all jumble nervous mumble wrong. Because I might say something stupid. Or too revealing. Or not revealing enough. But I make valid points. It's just difficult to hear what they are. Because I buried them in a lot of dumbo jumbo.

Anyway. The Not Back to School Party. We go.

What a relief. They were normal. Those home educating people. No-one had two heads. No-one made me listen to a singing baby Jesus. No-one was called Woman Moon Blood Womb.

And I think we got away with it. I zipped up the human skin very tightly on Shark, Tiger and Squirrel. I used the reverse suction pad on the forehead where the horns grow. The hairy scales on their toes I dealt with in the usual manner, and I coiled up my tail and hid it beneath a long skirt. That way, when people meet me for the first time, they just think I have a very big bum.