My family continued in the ATI program, but at 13 I came down with a chronic illness that limited my participation in--or at least willingness to cooperate with--formal assignments for the next few years. Instead, I lay on the couch and read.
By this time I was editing my mother's writing and working through my brother's college math books, so my mother didn't worry about what particular things I studied. I was most interested in fiction at first, and I read a great deal of that, mostly good stuff, although I also slogged through a lot of twaddle, especially reviewing books donated to the church library.
We had a set of high school literature (A Beka) books which I read; I have heard these criticized as providing little snippets when one should read whole books. But most of the pieces I remember were poems and short stories, which stood on their own well. It was in those books that I first met Tolstoy, Sayers, and Chesterton, and I owe them a great debt. I don't think I would have picked up War and Peace if I hadn't first read "How Much Land Does a Man Need?"
I also had a brief interest in cartooning, which led me in a completely unexpected direction. For Christmas, my mother ordered me a book on cartooning by Vic Lockman, and along with it a book on economics that he had drawn in cartoons. It seems a rather corny idea (although after reading more books later I discovered it follows the classic Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt very closely). But it got me hooked and charted a new course for the next decade. (I did about three pages in the cartooning book and gave it up.)
So the next order of books brought me Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? and Whatever Happened to Justice? by Richard Maybury. Now I was really intrigued with the ideas of liberty and limited government. I read more. I discovered the Foundation for Economic Education; I discovered the Federalist Papers and Frederic Bastiat. I was madly in love, and I bored my family to tears with babbling on about my new passion.
After a couple of years, my health grew more stable and I grew more ambitious. I began attending local political events. I organized a political club for local teenagers. My mother's best friend ran for office, with my sister as her campaign manager, and I tagged along, doing data entry, supervising bulk mailings, and making endless phone calls (a task I always hated and still do). I got my driver's permit during this time and practiced my driving going door-to-door with the candidate.
After the campaign was over, successfully, my sister did a little work for a small think tank in the state capital; the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. She brought me along with her. After she left to work elsewhere, I stayed on for a few months, living with the executive director, Lynn Harsh, who then was still homeschooling her own son. I remember curling up and listening to her read Hans Brinker to him in the evenings, and then, when she was done, I would pull books off her shelf and read Thomas Sowell into the night.
During the day, when no one had anything useful for me to do, I would read back copies of The Freeman (FEE's newsletter). When I did have something useful to do, I learned about state budgets and finally mastered percents; I learned how to do research and how to get information out of a bureaucrat; I squelched my fear of phone calls and collaborated on one project with the ACLU.
After a few months, though, my mother decided it was time I came back home. I was only sixteen, after all. Plus, I had heard about a new law school opening, the Oak Brook College of Law, which would allow me to study law from home. I had already decided I wanted to study law; this made it possible for me to start sooner. So I came home and began cramming to pass enough CLEP tests to have the college credits to start law school that fall.
Looking back, I do feel like my studies during that time were a bit lopsided. I never did study science. Except for the 18th century in England, France and America, I learned little history. But at least I never got the idea that my studies were done. I never did officially graduate high school. It seemed irrelevant. | 