Two Homeschoolers of Verona: A Contrast

     I had no idea what was happening in front of me.  Only a few days before, my best friend, "Sylvia," and I had been hastily stitching up her homemade Renaissance gown for the play she and a group of friends were preparing to perform.  After hours of pinning and re-pinning, nail-biting and teeth-gnashing, sewing and ripping out seams, the night for rehearsals had finally come; and I was, consequently, dragged along to enjoy my first taste of Shakespeare.  As a teenage boy in pantaloons stepped up to sing a love ballad to Sylvia, standing gracefully in her ivory tower above, it occurred to me that these people were not the sort of people I was used to.  They actually did this on their own accord?  Really?

  A break was announced at the halfway mark; and Sylvia rushed me backstage to meet the cast.  All too quickly I got the sensation that our social bustling was a bit of a nuisance to the distracted players squeezing past each other in the bottle-necked hallway.  But soon enough we found a backroom, where I was introduced to "Julia," the group's founder.  She wore a wondrously complicated, layered, dark green, satin gown with a detachable skirt and boy's breeches underneath (for her disguise in Act IV, of course.)  It was completely handmade.  The triumph Sylvia and I had experienced in correctly attaching two sleeves to her dress suddenly felt very small next to this roped, corseted, lined, hemmed marvel at which I couldn't stop gawking.

  The three girls in that room were each home-schooled from kindergarten, but the contrast between each of us illuminated something I've felt unconsciously for years.  When given the chance, one can pretty quickly distinguish between two types of home-schooling folk: those who try to live a "normal," culturally acceptable lifestyle in spite of the home-schooling, and those who, instead, create their own norm and identity around their family' quirks and convictions through the home-schooling.  These are the home-scholars that feel free to make their own soaps and clothing, free to chuck their television sets in favor of classic literature, free to be "weird."

     In practice, my family had fallen somewhere in an uncomfortable middle-ground, too different to be "normal" homeschoolers, too mainstream to be of the latter group.  In practice, though we knew they existed, we hadn't really gotten the opportunity to know any of the uber unorthodox home-scholars.  But despite the stigma that goes with the "weird" ones, what I found myself watching that evening was a group of truly confident, happy teens practicing what they loved, without any awkward peer pressure to the contrary.  Though, by our culture's standard, their interests are undeniably unconventional, by creating their own mini-culture they are able to achieve whatever they set out to do, unhindered by everyday norms.

During the past few years I've gotten to know Julia and her Shakespeare group much more.  As we munch on cheese and crackers and quip on the themes of reality and perception in The Taming of the Shrew, I'm reminded that we're all called to refuse to let society's "in" culture rule what we enjoy, pursue, or believe.  Cultures change and devolve; why bow to their whims?  Rather than follow fads and trends that change, literally, with the season, if we stick with our own particular interests and convictions, we have the chance to truly master them, even if it may sometimes involve donning a pair of pantaloons.

     Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. (Romans 12:2)