Okay, that's humiliating.

I am so sad.

I am not just the worst homeschooling parent out there.

I am apparently the only one who ever has a horrible homeschooling moment.

I haven't gotten one story yet. Not one.

Granted, I'm giving away issues of a magazine that have already been in circulation for a while. And most of the people who read this blog probably purchase the mag, too.

Still. I can't shake this feeling of being the only real bad homeschooler out there.

I'm the only one who has stories like this True Tale of Terror, which I wrote up in preparation to post on the Real Bad Mommies site (the site I last updated just after the ancient Egyptians put the last finishing touches of gold paint on the Great Pyramid of Giza):
 
My nine-year-old son heard about the concept of the "cuss jar" and gleefully danced out one morning with one he'd rigged up himself. It has a sign on it and everything. He insists that we keep it out in the living room, so everyone can see just how evil I've been.

The worst cuss jar moment came one morning when we were on our way out to a friend's house, where I teach some French to a few local homeschoolers once a week. I deserve no credit for this noble-sounding endeavor. I got elected teacher because I remember the most French from high school, and I don't have a dishwasher so I can listen to those French language tapes while I do the dishes every night.

I super don't deserve any credit for this, because I'm always getting on this one poor mom who comes late a lot, and yet I'm always late. Or, at best, screaming on the jagged edge of on-timeness. The class is on a Monday morning. I am not a Monday morning person. I am not an ANY morning person.

On this particular morning, we had run downstairs and out the front gate to the car lugging all the class stuff. We were already running late. I had a headache. And thanks to the fact that my car is falling apart and I can't spend a penny on it just now, I have to have my sunglasses whenever I go driving because I don't have the driver's side sun visor any more. It just fell off one day, and I couldn't get it screwed back in, so even on cloudy days I have to take my sunglasses with me, just in case.

And I didn't have my sunglasses today. They were out the garage door, through the gate, through the courtyard, up the stairs, and behind the double-locked front door. So we were going to be later than we already were. Damn it.  

I didn't just think it, either. I said it.  

"We have to go back up," I said to my son. "I have to get my sunglasses and put a quarter in the cuss jar."

Here's what freaked me out. My son, who'd heard exactly what I said and who once wanted me to deposit a quarter for saying that someone was an idiot, said, "Don't worry, Mom. Damn isn't so bad."

So then I had to explain (like I wasn't having a bad enough morning) that as a matter of fact, "damn" is one of the baddies and I'd better not hear him saying it at the park unless he wanted CPS to come and find him a new mommy.
 
Apparently nobody but me has great moments in homeschooling like this.

If you know anyone whose homeschooling halo has maybe slipped just a tad, and if he or she doesn't buy Secular Homeschooling Magazine but always loves a freebie, could you send them an anonymous tip about this little giveaway? (Assuming, of course, that you want to keep them as a friend. If you've been wanting to dump them for months now but just haven't been able to figure out quite how to do it, send them an email cheerily announcing that you're sure they'd win first prize in this contest.)