definitely not normal

My friend and I were talking about how, in a way, it is nice as homeschool families to just look "normal" ... you know, not stand out or, more preferably, not stick out.  I agreed and we continued on in our happy conversation.  I certainly had visual images in my head of not-normal homeschool people, having either met some, or just using my imagination.  It wasn't hard to do. 

Then this morning happened.

I decided to "look it up" as my daddy always said, and this is what I found ...

Normality (behavior)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

In behavior, normal refers to a lack of significant deviation from the average. The phrase "not normal" is often applied in a negative sense (asserting that someone or some situation is improper, sick, etc.). Abnormality varies greatly in how pleasant or unpleasant this is for other people; somebody may half-jokingly be called "pleasantly disturbed".

From the Latin Normalis (f).

For example, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim indicated in his Rules of Sociological Method that the most common behavior in a society is considered normal. People who do not go along are violating social norms and will invite a negative reaction from others in the society.

Ok.  Me and mine are definitely not normal.  We may look it on the outside at a glance, even if we do dress a little differently than many of the parents we know, but we are anything but normal on the "inside", regularly violating social norms (even within the "church", oh my).

• we homeschool,  but not like the other parents in my local group who use recognized material.  I am even branching out by writing my own curriculum and selling it to other suckers people