I can’t think of many situations where I didn’t have options. I think that’s true of most people. Even when we think that the answer is a given and that there is no other course of action, there really is. It may not be desirable, for whatever reason, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.
My mother was always one for options. She’d state the situation clearly and explain what the various choices were. Even if it’s a simple choice between action and inaction, the choice is there to make. Options present themselves, though we may not like what it is we have to choose from.
When I left 8th grade, I had three options before me. The same teacher I talked about previously had become my french teacher in 7th and 8th grade. We were a class of two. In fact, the other girl was one of the power set when I first started, but we had come a long way in our relationship by then. We learned quickly and well, and were quite conversational in french for young American teenagers.
Our teacher had found an opportunity for us to spend our freshman year in France with a traveling alternative school. Neither of us would know anyone else, and we weren’t fluent in french, but we would surely pick it up as we went along. At first we were both very excited about this prospect and I was certainly leaning far in that direction. At the very least, I would have one person who spoke my language and who I knew.
And then her mother got pregnant.
She decided that she couldn’t leave. She simply coudln’t be away while her mother was pregnant, when things would be changing so drastically in her family, when she was going to have a baby brother or sister.
But I coudln’t do it alone.
It didn’t matter how well-traveled I was. It didn’t matter how confident I was in my french. It didn’t matter how independent I thought myself. I could not, at 14 years old, leave behind everything I knew to go to a literally foreign place with no safety net for an entire year. I just couldn’t do it.
Our teacher was furious and called me all sorts of names. She accused me of things I honestly can’t even remember now, but I do remember that, at the time, my mother was in the midst of a terrible falling out with much of the community and many of the things I was accused of was being "just like your mother". Which was strange. It wasn’t my mother making that choice for me, in fact, she was very encouraging and told me time and again that she would support me no matter what I decided.
So I didn’t choose that first option.
The second option was to homeschool. My mother and I researched the matter fully, going so far as to attend one of the social meeting things for homeschoolers in the area. I didn’t like the kids. I didn’t like the adults. I got a weird vibe from the people and the place and a lot of the things that were said to or around me just didn’t ring true. I was also far too social a person to isolate myself like that, so option number 2 was ruled out.
Which only left the third – public school in the district where I had already failed socially.
Looking back, as an adult, and combining it with the stories I’ve heard and witnessing Spawn’s middle school experiences, I know now that middle school is HELL. Of all the divisions of schooling, middle school is by far the cruelest. Pre-teens are astonishingly mean to one another, especially girls. When you’re changing fundamentally, it’s easy to take out your own confused feelings on those around you, especially those who are at all different, especially those who are wildly different.
High school, though, is a time for re-invention and self-discovery.
I know that now. I didn’t know it then, but I was willing to give it another shot. Not that, having ruled out my other options, I had another available choice.
I wouldn’t go to France. I wouldn’t isolate myself in a trailer in the woods. I would go to public high school and do the best that I possibly could.