The homeschooler Conventions, looking back at them, are reminiscent of normal convention shopping sections. There were booths and vendors, everyone trying to get you to sign up for their curriculum, and I, feeling like I had something to prove, signed up for the most difficult at the time. Every year I had the chance to change it and make it easier, but the easiest path was never fun for me, I've always enjoy a good challenge.
So, through the last part of 2nd grade all the way through my high school graduation I was homeschooled.
Granted, I was given a chance to go to a regular high school, but I wanted to stick with what I knew best at the time and missed out on some critical "social" skills, looking back though, I wouldn't change it for the world.
Plus I lucked out pretty hard.
My best friend growing up was also homeschooled until high school, we met at the park which was by both of our houses, and we lived only a block apart (2-3 minutes walking distance for a kid) and he is the one that taught me how to person if that makes any sense. We were just 2 kids playing at the park talking about video game systems and then I invited him back to my place to play some video games.
My Mom, I think was just beyond excited I made a friend so she welcomed him with open arms and his mom did the same with me.
He was the Xbox and Sega kid, I was PlayStation and Nintendo, so between the both of us we had the whole world of games open to us.
But, because my mom couldn't do much growing up I had to learn how to juggle being a kid, helping to take care of my mom, and my school work.
So more often then not, aside from my escape of video games I never really had much time to be a kid.
Fast forward to my teenage years and we'll call him Billy, my best friend from all those years ago, got big into playing guitar, and being the guy who always liked to be player two I learned how to play bass guitar so him and I learned how to play together and we started working on some songs and even tried playing at a couple open Mic nights around town to get used to playing in from of people.
Also at the same time I started working Friday nights at one of the local fish fries as a busboy, my dad being very encouraging was the dishwasher there so it let us spend some time as well as learn some social skills.
Around that time we were able to get a band started thanks to one of the local "rock shop" programs.
For those who never heard about something like that I'll explain it.
It was/is a 12 week course that a music teacher had the idea to put together where kids who wanted that band experience would go to and be tossed together based on skill level, age, and ability to learn and work together and at the end we would put on a 30 minute set at a community center that would let us set up and tear down our gear and equipment and really get that "band" feel, complete with a poster picture and an audience of mostly the bands parents and maybe a few people that were curious or heard about it.
Then, as all good things do, it came to an abrupt end. I remember he tried killing himself with one of his guitar strings and I think he tried running away from home, but I didn't and still don't know what really happened.
All i can recall was all the adults being happy he was alright, and me being the weird one, just tried to make everything seem like it never happened, mostly because i was just happy to have him back after not hearing from him for a while (I was helping my mom while he was going through his shit, I didn't even comprehend the idea of suicide at that time).
Shortly thereafter him and his parents moved out of state for financial reasons and him and I drifted apart over the years, but whenever we can we just pick things up like we were never apart at all.
I was still huge into music though, i fell in love with being on stage, playing in front of crowds, making music and learning about music theory (I never could grasp how to read music, but just by listening to a song I could learn it with relative ease).
Mind you, my distortions were still very real at the time but I adapted around them.
The shadow I would always see in my house I named Henry, and whenever something unexplained happened when it was mom and I alone at home we would always joke and just blame Henry for things that nowadays I still cannot explain. I never heard "voices" as my mom described them but I did have two distinct thoughts in my mind aside from my own. I did, and still do believe they are guardian spirits of some sort. People and my mom always said they are guardian angels, but they never felt angelic to me so I dropped that part and kept the term "guardians".
I would have conversations with them and the more, let's say intense of the two of them, would always be trying to toughen me up, kind of like a more mild drill Sgt.
While the more caring one would reassure me and focus on building me up.
And then I met my first girlfriend at one of our shows, well kinda...
