I Never Attended a Traditional School :: Personal Narrative Writing

I Never Attended a Traditional School My schooling was never anything near normal. I never went to normal school or what everyone would call traditional school with a curriculum for any length of time. It is not uncommon now to meet home-schooled children or hear of how home-schooled children participate with traditionally schooled children, but in my time, people would look at me strangely if I were not in school. "Honey, why aren't you in school?" was the dreaded question. I could almost feel truant officers watching me in the shadows while I answered back. In my mind, truant officers were like policemen who would put bad children in jail and feed them only bread and water. "We just moved... I will be in the local school soon," I would answer. After the interrogation I would hang my head in shame. I felt like a social outcast, too old for preschool, and yet too young to be a school dropout. I would dig my heels into the ground, staring at my shiny red shoes and my white lacy socks. I wanted to disappear from the face of the earth by somehow digging myself into a deep hole in the ground. My younger sister was spared the humiliation since she was still an infant and was of preschool age when we finally stopped our travels and settled into a neighborhood for a while. "Mummy, why can't I just go to school like everyone else?" I would ask her in dismay after those dreaded incidents. My world felt gray and a funny unhappy feeling would sink into my stomach. My mother would turn her beautiful face towards me, the perfect socialite, the model body, with the presence of an actress. She was oblivious to my distress. I knew she would laugh off my fears just as she laughed off her own most of her life. "We move too much...and you are very lucky...it's not common to see the world as you do. It's much better that I take you when you're still little and can catch up with school. Many children would really envy you. You get enough of an education by traveling with me," she would answer. I often wondered why I could not be as cool and collected as the beautiful stranger who was my own mother. Instead, I was shy and lacked much self-esteem. I was plagued by fears and a mouth that would button itself in the most critical moments.