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...)

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.

This is almost extactly our situation with our daughter. Only she would actually be 7 before starting first grade. There is still a chance we might insert her into public school for second grade (the original plan if the school wouldn't put her into first grade this year), but my wife is now talking about doing homeschool indefinitely.

for cookie-dough reasons

Yes, this. Why doesn't she watch Buffy? Oh, yeah - because there are vampires and demons in it and therefore it is evil.

I have nothing to say on the homeschooling front as I have never known anyone who was. Which I suppose says something in itself.

Every new girlfriend I met was introduced to me as his fiance.

I had a college friend like that. After every first date, he'd tell us that they weren't talking about marriage yet.

In a completely unironic way.

Our joke was that he was going for his "Mr." degree.

Matt, Pete, I never knew any boys like that. They were all marriage-scared, I think. Dh and I met at a work Christmas party. We were going out after, so I had him come by to meet my folks, so they'd be able to identify him in a line up, if he turned out to be an axe murderer.

When I went upstairs to change, apparently a slightly tipsy dh, had a nice long ramble with my mother about how he wasn't looking to get married, and had no plans to get married, and wasn't even interested in finding someone to marry.

The thing that always cracked me up was best friend dated women that were like refugees from a sitcom or an Adam Sandler movie. Like, one engagement ended with a restraining order, and another when her friends in school started getting their driver's licenses and suddenly settling down to married life didn't seem as cool.

Curse Canada and its ability to change all the coins in my change purse to its useless-in-American-vending-machines currency!