FWIW, some of them really suffered socially and just in terms of life skills.

Well, I think I suffered socially and in terms of life skills at my particular public school. At least, I feel like I spent a good chunk of my 20's playing catch-up compared to most of my college friends. Most of whom were also products of public schools, just better ones.

3. The toy is alive! ALIVE! Run! Flee!

Yes. Only the toy might just be possessed. Either flee or grab a sword.

Yes. Only the toy might just be possessed. Either flee or grab a sword.

And some holy water if you have it.

Mr. H and I been married longer than we've known each other

Damn, how'd you work that?

I know I was really lucky in my particular public schools, but at least part of that was the fact that my parents paid (less than private school money) to send me out of my district for high school.

What Teppy said. In the next four years, DH and I know we need to either move to a place with excellent public schools or put ourselves in a position to afford private ones. But if that doesn't work out, I feel like homeschooling Annabel rather than enrolling her in a subpar school is the only responsible thing to do.

FWIW, the nephew is attending Seattle Public Schools, and isn't getting a subpar education. (He's at Coe.)

Thus far, the various district problems haven't had much of a negative effect on the product, though results vary from school to school. Historically, this has been true of the district for as long as I can remember (it's the district where Dad started his teaching career). Shoreline, however (the district where Dad finished his teaching career) has a better academic reputation, or did last I checked. The Seattle Times schools overviews are quite helpful for comparing actual results vs. reputations.

I actually had a friend try to talk me out of getting married because I was betraying feminism.

Ha! Okay, this? No. I have a list of reasons why my friend should not get married, but this is not one of them.

I also may a leetle bit be projecting my own skin-crawlingly acute fear of any kind of commitment. A bit. Maybe.

I have a friend, firmly nonreligious but very earthy and crunchy and holistic, who, last I heard, was bound and determined to homeschool her two boys

This is my sister, only with a boy and a girl. Her eldest is about to be 11 and has always been homeschooled, though he also has a math tutor and does a lot of short-term instructional program thingies with groups.

I feel like with Seattle it all depends on which school we can get her into. Not that I even know which are the good elementary schools yet, but I get the impression there's a wide variation. And it's hard to read all the stuff in the papers about the mismanagement and be all, "Yay! That's where I want my daughter to go to school! She'll get a perfect education there, prepare her for anything!"

And Shoreline is one of our first choices for a place to buy because of the schools.

I got married at 22. I don't really recommend it, for cookie-dough reasons, but it did last 13 years.

I have known of someone who homeschooled a child for what would have been her first year of school because she was pretty mature and had a birthday that would make her start first grade at almost 7. The school system had a minimum age for starting school, but not for second grade. I also worked with a guy who had several foster children and his wife homeschooled them because their backgrounds made it difficult for them to interact well with the humans. The idea was to get them caught up academically and then move them to public school.

I don't think getting married in the early 20s is inherently doomed or anything - if people find the partner they love and are compatible with at that age, what would be the sense of waiting? I do think there's a problem with just graduated twentysomethings deciding marriage is something they need to check off a list like grocery items though. Despite the stereotype of the woman planning her wedding before meeting the groom, my own best friend was like this, doing the desperate to marry someone, ANYone thing. Every new girlfriend I met was introduced to me as his fiance. (Thankfully, he actually married the right one rather than any of those other fiances...)