What unschooling looked like today

MJ asked me to report on her "good day."

She was on MySpace in the morning, and then she watched an episode of Buffy with Chloe. After that, they went to get a Monster at Safeway and to visit Frankie Fingers at the piercing parlor. From there, they walked to my brother's to visit cousin Chelsea. They talked with her about her day, then the three of them walked back to our house. They hung out for a bit, then went back to Safeway for tortellini. Then Chelsea and MJ watched "Fight Club" while Chloe hung out with the neighbor kids. After the movie, Chelsea and MJ walked back to Chelsea's to hang out some more. They watched that show where "that dude Bear goes into, like, wild places and brings a cameraman and does crazy, survival-tactics shit. He was in the Everglades and he was catching catfish by, like, letting them bite his fingers, 'cause they just clamp on. And then he killed one with his knife and ate it raw. And he also found, like, two washed-up shrimp boats and a house that got tossed around by a storm." Then MJ got a ride home, where she hung out outside with Chloe and the neighbor kids for a long time.

When she came back in, she took down all the photos that had been her wallpaper in her room. (She hasn't yet decided what to replace them with. In the meantime, it's freaking me out. It looks like she's moving out or something.) She all the photos in a box and started decorating the box with cutouts from the many magazines that take up big chunks of our shelves. She kept doing that while she and I watched "Accepted."

What she says she learned about:

• Economics
• Favoritism (Frankie doesn't make MJ pay for replacement balls for her nose rings any more)
• Social hierarchy in high schools
• Psychology
• Anarchy
• Multiple personality disorder
• Survival (At this point, she launched into a horrified description of how dude Bear peed on the catfish bites on his hand to sterilize them.)
• Interior decoration
• Arts and crafts
• Alternative education