Boys! OK Maybe just my Boy!

When you homeschool your child your life is different.Your child is different than most.A good kind of different,not a he hides in the basement all day taxidermying rodent armies kind of different!
They look at the world differently,I think it is because there is no pressure on them to fit into a certain small box of conformity that comes with public school. The Boy is free to go where his interest take him and we will adjust our learning to whatever his latest interests are. The Boy is a little obsessive about learning. Never is he content to just skim the surface of a subject! He digs deep,finds the obscure facts,devours every crumb of information! He can hold his own with anyone with his knowledge of military and military history! Actually it is this way for any of his passions! Please don't expect him to read some lighthearted,half fictional book about a subject.He wants it dry,factual and dense! A book you could use as a murder weapon if you wanted knock someones brains out! Gives me a headache just thinking about it! The books,not the murder!

Where I am going with this?Oh,yeah...we are sci-fi geeks. Well,mostly just me, The Boy and Nana! The Boy's latest passion is astrophysics and astronomy...thank the Good Lord for the Internet and Half-Priced Books 'cause Mama can't help him with this one! The Boy is a talker,he loves to share his discoveries and latest obsessions with me.Now when it is something like the goats I can have a conversation with him.I can even umm-hmm my way through hours of detailed facts about failed military weapons of WWII. Sigh...when he starts talking about time and space are like rubber bands or ribbons or something and when they touch we could possible one day use that for time travel, or of time change in black holes or of the light years it takes to get to Alpha-someplace and a million other things that my mind has basically not absorbed,he sees my eyes start to glaze over.He is not content for me not to understand,noooooo! Momma has to understand! So to help my feeble mind to grasp these facts he makes references to Star Trek!

He'll start off with,"Remember The Next Generation episode 178...."

I will reply with something like,"Boy,you know I don't have episode numbers memorized!"

He will sigh and throw in an eye roll,because I apparently need to have my sci-fi geek member ship revoked for my laziness in not committing the episode numbers to memory! Like I have that many spare brain cells left! I am certainly not going to waste them on episode numbers,792 types of heirloom seeds maybe,but not episode numbers!

He will continue, undaunted by my failure,"Remember the one where Captain Picard......... well,it's kind of like that."

Apparently Star Trek is not that far fetched after all!

Then there are his shopping list!They all ways start with a holler from somewhere,because we never go find each other we just holler from where ever we are! Yep,we don't hide the facts, we are big ole' rednecks! Well,I claim Hillbilly,I think that is a few steps up from redneck!

"Mom,when we go to Home Depot can I get........?"

Well some times these list are pretty benign,just wood and the like to make something like a catapult or trebuchet or some other ancient replica.Some times they are a little more suspicious like when he wanted to make a still or the ingredients to make his own gun powder! He gave me a list yesterday that didn't sound too suspicious,but my mom radar went off. I asked what he wanted it for.He said he wanted to build a silencer for his gun! Boys!!!!

I am a firm believer that you should let boys act like boys.Be rough and adventurous,balanced with good sense and good manners.I try not to ever stifle his creative genius,but I draw the line at illegal stuff!

I once read somewhere a homeschooling mom say that the biggest mistake we make is teaching them to read! Once they can read there is no stopping them and no telling what it will lead to!

He is still trying to talk me into buying him some book off Amazon about deadly poisons! When I asked him why he needed this book he just said something like, it is just good stuff to know or you can never know too much!

Does it sound weird when people ask what your kid wants for his birthday and you say,"Oh ,the usual kid stuff,some ipod apps and a book on 101 deadly poisons,a really big murder weapon..er..I mean book on astrophysics, materials for a silencer,a goat and a new rabbit cage!"

Well,you all know my motto,life is an adventure! Not only because I have a wonderfully crazy globe trotting husband,live in a dilapidated old farm house,and have a menagerie of critters but also because of my smart,funny and unpredictable BOY!!!