Expanding our minds

I got DSL! I got DSL!

The phone guy showed up exactly, right on schedule. He plugged everything in. I installed the program. Beautiful, everything worked. I take back all the uncharitable things I said about Sprint, at least until something screws up.

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The downside to educating your children, and I am refering to the high-minded Greek idea of education here because I'm reading Climbing Parnassus, is that you create cultural aliens, cultural in the anthropological sense.

My older girls realized today that they do not fit in. They complained about not being able to hold a decent conversation with their peers during today's swimming lessons. The only topics discussed with enthusiasm were Pokemon, Manga, and Game Boys, none of which my darlings know or care anything about. When my kids shared their story about finding the octupi this weekend, they were met with blank stares by the other children and parents who interrupted them midsentence to mention their savvy $2.00 savings on Pepsi at Winn-Dixie. S was very frustrated by the general ignorance, and both girls lamented the fact that the odds of making any real friends here are very low.

I came up with as many explanations as I could. Among others, maybe:

-- the kids didn't believe it
-- it sounded like bragging
-- the parents believe children should be seen, not heard (thus the proliferation of hand-held electronic toys?)

Further discussion at home determined that moving back to Hollywood or Fort Lauderdale would not change things. Going to an expensive private school would not change things either.

We do have some homeschool friends who are on the same track as we are, but they are not full-time Florida residents. Kind of like you all.

Instead, we live among people who visit the "specialtist" when their regular doctor won't do, who marvel at the "zefflin" flying overhead, who advertise "Happily Divorced 2x's" on their pick-up's window tint, who give their ADHD, bi-polar, heavily medicated kid a Game Boy, at their doctor's suggestion, to improve his eye-hand coordination, who are great-grandmothers at 45 years of age and raising their grandchildren, and belong to churches like the True Highway Holiness Hallelujah Freedom Bible Church of the Love Gospel.

Tonight, rather than watch The Game, even though she has a huge crush on Johnny Damon, G decided to watch "The Missing Link" on NOVA (I thought that was Johnny Damon), and S has been taking apart old, broken watches to see what makes them tick.

So yes, we are freaks, oddballs, foreigners among our fellow residents. Always positive though, the foil to my pessimism, my husband pointed out that this particular housing experiment has been an eye-opening, mind expanding experience for us.