Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Playing nice: homeschoolers out and about

Today we were out buying Easter shoes - every year at this time I realize my girl needs nice church shoes and it always turns into a big ordeal, but as usual I digress - around 10 am: school hours! The gal at Payless was very helpful, looking for sizes and generally being nice. Though it is not always this way, my kids were polite, pleasant, and helpful today. They "showed well."

As we were paying, the clerk asked "no school today?" She was not confrontational, just curious. Maybe not even that; maybe just chatty. It must be boring there in the shoe store during school hours. So I just replied "Oh, we homeschool. We did some work this morning, and we'll go home and do some more after this."

I don't remember what she said, but she responded pleasantly and positively. Maybe it was just "cool." Which can also be interpreted as "dismissively." Anyway, the point is:

- she wasn't rude

- we weren't rude

- we didn't assume she was being confrontational about homeschooling and didn't feel we need to defend our right to be out buying shoes during "school hours."

- she might, if she has any memory of us at all, remember homeschoolers in a positive way.

Isn't that be better than remembering us as being rude and snarky for daring to ask why two obviously-school-aged children are out messing around when it seems they should be in school?

1 comment:

Sandy said...

So much better, of course. :)