You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Mississippi.
    My brother and I tried to hang out with other homeschooled kids a few times, but in the ass crack of the Bible Belt, parents who kept their kids home were not going to intersect with our liberal points of view. Ever.
    At one awkward meet-up, I was hanging out with a girl around my age on the playground. She was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and an overdress down to her ankles. I kid you not; she looked like a Pilgrim, and her name was Eunice.
    I made the first move. Because socialization beggars can’t be choosers. “What books do you read?”
    “The Bible.”
    “Have you read A Wrinkle in Time ? Or Perry Mason, The Case of the Fan Dancer’s Horse ?”
    “No. We only read the Bible.”
    “Oh. You’re a Thumper.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing. Wanna swing?”
    “I can’t. I might show my ankles.”
    I laughed because I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.
    After that, my brother and I were in agreement: being alone was better than hanging around those homeschooled weirdos.
    So I didn’t spend much time with other children as a kid. SURPRISE! I actually can’t name one best friend I had during those years outside of a group lesson situation. But it’s human instinct to connect, and eventually I found someone who would listen to me no matter how weird I was: my little pink diary.

    I called myself Leesie as a kid because I guess my family couldn’t think of a more unattractive nickname. Oh wait. My grandpa called me Pooch. That one I won’t embrace in print.
    But the way I wrote to this diary, you’d think I was writing on the mirror to another little girl who existed on the other side of the page.
    “Dear Diary, it’s been a month since I wrote. I know, I’m a bad friend.”
    “. . . I finished the Emily of New Moon books this week, but I mustn’t bore you.”
    “Today’s our first anniversary. Happy Birthday to us!”
    I confided everything a weird sixth-grader would share with other children and definitely be rejected for in a typical school situation. Big dreams like, “Wouldn’t it be neat to go back to 1880 and there wasn’t any kidnappers and progress, and the streams and fields and everything were beautiful?”

    I made super-serious vows in the margins, like, “Vow: I will never kill an animal if I can help it.” “Vow: I will never marry a man for money.” “Vow:I will never let my children live in a slum.” Real personality-congealing self-work.
    My mom was a big political activist, and that rubbed off on me in a big way, too. The diary is awash in bold political statements and social consciousness.
    “We have a new president. George Bush and Dennis the Menace for vice president.”
    Most of all, the diary was a safe zone. A place where I could share my innermost thoughts, work out a semblance of an identity, analyze my likes and dislikes, and work through my relationships, like that with my brother, Ryon, in a thoughtful, mature way.

    That little pink diary is a tome for the ages.
    My mother wasn’t totally blind to the fact that we needed exposure to other kids. She made efforts. But none of them seemed to stick. Probably because my attitude toward other children was like a seventy-year-old spinster’s.
    “This girl Kate from violin lesson came over and I told her about my books. She doesn’t read. Stupid. I won’t explaen [ sic ] them to her. She has no imagination.”
    “We went to eat with Miss Molly’s two kids today and they were putting forks on the floor and stepping on them like hoolegans [ sic ]. We also took Samantha (10) who is fat and obnoxious, but nice when she isn’t giggling insatatiabley [ sic ].”
    “I went to an opera-ballet by myself. Behend [ sic ] me were two 7-year-old giggling brats. Well, gotta go!”
    The only kid in real, close proximity to me was Erin, a thirteen-year-old who lived next door. She taught me that owning a trampoline was the most glamorous thing a girl could have, and that jelly shoes were haute couture. I learned