My Senior Year

The school year always started with two or three weeks of soccer practice before we ever stepped into a classroom. I had a couple free periods which were used to help on the yearbook and create the school paper. I took an advanced math class and a couple other non-required classes because I had fulfilled most of the requirement for graduating high school already. 

I don’t know how I knew this but I realized that if I transferred to a public high school I would only have to take a class or two to graduate and it might have even been possible to graduate that year if not for the Bible classes that we were required to take each year. Transferring to another school was not even an option. I’d spent 12 years at TCA and most of us seniors had been going to school together for five or more years. Plus, I don’t think my parents would have allowed it even if I had wanted it. 

My friends would date one another but I was usually everyone’s friend and didn’t date but during the Fall of ’84, I got interested in an IBC college freshman and we hung out a lot. I guess we were dating but we always did it in groups and my family used to take her home after church. I was very, very naïve about things at 17. I remember her trying to make me jealous while we worked together right across the street at Piccadilly Restaurant. While she was home in another state during Christmas break, she ended our relationship. We remained friends and I and my friends used to hang out with her and her sisters. 

I always loved the first week of school because we’d go off to a school retreat and then in January we’d have Spirit Week. Our class always did really well and came up with some really creative themes. We won Spirit Week our Junior and Senior years of high school.

Senior trip was one to be remembered. The first place we went to was Ironwood Camp for a few days and some Seniors from MGM were there also. We made some new friends and had a good time. Then we headed to San Francisco and then down to San Diego. I don’t remember all the places we went but I remember going to Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo. The best part of Disneyland is that we went on some of the rides many, many times without waiting in a line. It was great. The 3D experience was brand new and I thought we went to see Michael Jackson’s EO but I’m told that came out in ’86 and so I must have seen it later. I remember feeling guilty about it because it was Michael Jackson, rock music, etc. but it was 3D and we’d never heard or seen anything like that and we had to check it out. It was pretty cool.

The best part of our senior year was graduation. Thirteen years of going to TCA all ending in May of 1985. We only had 13 in our graduating class. Near the end of the year, we ended up with a dilemma. One of the seniors was caught stealing things from the girl’s locker room. It had been going on for a while but nobody could figure out who it was. The girl was caught during the last week or two of the school year. She’d only been coming to TCA for a year or two. I’m sure the school suspended her and they were going to give her a diploma but the seniors were given the choice to allow her to walk with us. I think we did a secret ballot and I believe we chose not to have her walk but I’m not sure how I voted.

Anyways, my senior year was great. I was going to college in the Fall. I had an interesting summer but I'll talk about that some other time.

Playing Sports at TCA

I am not and have never been very athletic but while in school I tried. Since our school was so small I was on the varsity soccer team since the fourth grade. I started on the front line and every two years I’d move back a position. Finally, the last three years I played goalie. I excelled pretty well at this. There are a couple reasons for this. First, I didn’t have to run. I hated running, not very good at running. In fact, even in high school I could only do a 10 minute mile, if I was lucky. Second, we played other Christian schools smaller than us and so competition was average and most of us on the team had played together for five to eight years and so I didn’t have to do a lot of work in protecting the goal. 

I loved playing soccer. When I was in high school, our team was undefeated. My favorite games were when we played a couple of the soccer leagues in town. We didn’t win but I had a lot of practice trying to block shots. It was a lot of fun and I got to show that I was pretty good. During my senior year I received the MVP award for individual, league, and tournament. I still have those trophies.

I was not good at basketball but during my freshman and sophomore years I kept trying. I was told that if I came to practice I’d get to play and those who skipped practiced wouldn’t get to play. It didn’t work out that way. I came to every practice but ended up only playing a minute or two each game. I know I wasn’t very good and I finally realized that it just was not worth my time. I gave up my dream of a basketball scholarship and getting into the NBA.

We didn't play football or baseball for number of reasons but we did play softball. I usually played catcher and was an average batter. I had a golf swing that worked okay but I worked on trying to change that so that I didn't pop out as much. I was an average player but I enjoyed playing. In one of our games, I still remember a friend named Richard jumping over the catcher to get to home base and he used to squat down while at bat to make it harder for the pitcher.

I remember the bus trips to and from the games. One time we even had somebody moon us. We’d take trips all the way up to north Phoenix to play Heart to Heart. We’d play Mexican Gospel Mission (MGM) and one or two other smaller Christian schools. Half the fields we played on were not well-kept but anyone who lives in Az knows it’s not easy to have a green lawn with 100+ degree heat especially when soccer starts before summer ends. 

Coach Fulmer was the best coach. No matter the sport, he would run us ragged to get us ready to play. We'd hold really loud team pep rally's in a classroom. One time he told us that if we scored a certain number of goals he'd switch and put the defense on offense. We got to ten goals and begged him to switch. It was great to play a forward again, even if just for a few minutes. I believe I was able to score one. That was one of many great games. 

Playing sports at TCA was a great experience.

My TCA trip to BJU

Our school, TCA, went to BJU several times for national competition. I only remember going to one of these competitions. I went to several regional competitions during my high school years and I thought it was funny because these were usually after the national competitions. I was part of the choir and ensembles but I did not participate in any of the preacher boy or other competitions at the national competition like I did at local or regional competitions. To be honest, I wasn’t very good and it was just kind of expected of us boys. Below are some of my memories from that trip which happened in the spring of 1983.

The first memory I have of that trip was our group packing into a couple of vans and we had CB radios to communicate with each other and my sister being sick. There’s more to this story but for the sake of my sister I will leave it there. By the end of the trip we had given names to different kinds of smells and new words had been created that were used months after the trip finished.

On our way across the country, we stopped at a number of different churches. There was one place we stopped at in OK and they had a special service and a banquet afterwards. Based on some of the people we saw and us high school students being shallow, we did not think or say very nice things about this place. I’m sure they were nice but we were not and I’ve always felt bad about that. One place we stopped at had arcade games that cost us a nickel to play or we’d play basketball in the school gym.

This was the trip that I was introduced to country music. I had a Walkman type radio with headphones and the only thing we could pick up driving through the South was country music radio stations. They kept saying, “Up next, Alabama.” I kept waiting for this song about Alabama and I didn’t understand until later that they were talking about the group Alabama. I remember hearing The Judds, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Oak Ridge Boys, Alabama, and others. I took my headphones apart and my friend and I would share and we’d listen to it as the vans went down the road. I remember feeling guilty about the music and it was my first taste of music outside of hymns, classical, and elevator music. I was quite the rebel.

At the campus of BJU, we were put in dorm rooms. I remember feeling uncomfortable. I was always afraid I was going to break some rule, show up at the gym at the wrong time, walk on the wrong sidewalk, or anything else that I couldn’t remember I was not supposed to do. I remember eating at the dining common. It’s where I was introduced to grits. Gross. I vaguely remember singing and I think we did pretty well but I’m not sure if we placed or not. I remember checking out the art gallery, dating parlor, the bridge, and other interesting places around the campus. 

I remember running around BJU with my best friend taking pictures and his brother was a student there and we met him and his fiancé. I remember sitting in the auditorium and how big it was, especially the pulpit.

This is the trip that I was introduced to southern style biscuits from Hardee’s and make them with sausage, awesome!! I remember forgetting to order cheese for my burger at Wendy’s. I think that pay phones cost $.10 and I’d call my parents occasionally. This sticks out to me because I remember later in high school when it jumped to a quarter and we thought that was a big deal.

To say the least, this trip was quite an adventure.  

A Lesson Learned

One year, when I was about 13 or 14 years old, there was single mom with two older kids who lived in the same mobile home park that we did. Her son went to public school and her daughter went to TCA. My parents arranged for this mom to pick up us three kids and ride with them to school. We probably did this for about two years. My parents would go off to work and we’d be responsible to get ready and be outside in time for this lady to take us to school.

I remember waiting outside in front of our double-wide trailer. One time, I was curious to see if cactus thorns would be strong enough to puncture tires and so I put a dirt pile in the middle of the street and put saguaro cactus thorns in it and pointed it in the direction cars would come. It wasn’t a high-traffic area and not a big street but none of the couple of cars that came by ran over my dirt pile. When I got home, the first thing I checked was that dirt pile and, of course, the thorns were broken.

There was another time when I was getting ready for school and I was all ready but then realized that I had forgotten to do some homework. I’m working on that and then I remember it is Friday and that Friday’s were dress-up day at TCA and we had to wear a tie and dress shoes. So, I’m doing my homework and I start changing my shoes at the same time. Our ride comes, I run out the door and get to school and start greeting my friends and guess what? I had on one tennis shoe and one dress shoe. You can imagine how much of an idiot I felt that day.

Anyway, while on one of our rides to school the mother thought I said something to or about her that I didn’t say and she got mad at me and told me and my mom that she would not take me to school any more. So, I was forced to walk about 4½ miles to school every morning. I don’t know how many months that I did this. My sisters were still allowed to ride but I had to leave early to walk to be able to get to school on time.

I insisted that I didn’t say whatever she thought I did and I wouldn’t apologize for something I didn’t do. My parents didn’t make me. Looking back, I’m kind of surprised about this and at the fact that I don’t remember being punished other than having to walk. 

This went on for a couple months and I finally went to my mom and said I was tired of walking and she told me that maybe if I apologize, she might let me ride in her car again. I told my mom, “but, I didn’t do anything wrong.” And here is the lesson that I learned from my mom. She told me, “Sometimes you have to apologize for things, even if you didn’t do it.” Now, at 13 or 14, that’s a hard pill to swallow. Nobody likes to say they are “sorry” or “please forgive me” to someone for something you’re sure you didn’t do but that’s exactly what I did. She accepted my apology and I was allowed to get a ride to school.

This lesson has stuck with me for life. Whether right or wrong, to this day, I’ll still apologize, even when I don’t think I did anything wrong. The other person thinks they have been wronged and sometimes it’s just better to apologize and remove the conflict than to continue insisting that you did nothing wrong. 

Thank you, mom, for teaching me this valuable lesson. I've never forgotten it.

more TCA memories

I remember the trips to National and Regional competitions around AZ, CA, & to SC. The best weeks of school was the first week in September when we’d go to the campgrounds in Payson to kick off the school year and Spirit Week in January. Our Senior Trip to CA was also a blast.

I remember fondly Mrs. Henry as the school principal. One of my teacher’s was a single parent with two children our age and she used to tell us of her time in Hawaii. She was a little different. I remember one of our teachers used to give swimming lessons during the summer at his house. I did my first back-flip there. I believe it was my fourth grade teacher that had a yellow car with a bumble bee sticker on side window. I remember one English teacher talking about kittens and microwaves. He only lasted one semester but he was the most effective English teacher I had. I remember one teacher who was extremely brilliant and talented but an ineffective teacher. If you could get him telling jokes, it was a waste of a class period. It was also the year of the Rubik’s Cube and he would have competitions in class of who could solve it the quickest. I remember one teacher telling us tricks to play as students and us going to the next class to try them out. I remember a very intelligent single woman with bad halitosis teaching us math and then seeing her meet and marry a cowboy who was going to college at IBC.

There are so many great memories of so many teachers, numerous fellow students, and loads of school activities. I know things weren’t perfect but we had good teachers and lots of friends. From my view inside the “bubble” that I lived, I thought life was pretty good.

TCA memories

In the fall of ’72, TCBC started Tri-City Christian Academy (TCA). I was in the first kindergarten class and I continued my education there until I graduated in 1985. My class was the first class to go from kindergarten to 12^th grade graduation. There were at least two others who graduated with me that I went to school with the entire 13 years of education at TCA. Most of the 13 graduates of 1985 had been my classmates for four to six years or more.

I have some very fond memories of TCA. I received a good education and a great foundation for future learning. Looking back there are things that I wish were different or better and things I didn’t like but I lived with it. Overall, going to TCA was a great experience for me and taught me a lot. Hindsight is 20/20 and I can’t change the past and I’m not sure I would want to change too much of it but I’ve made some choices in regards to my children’s education based on my experiences and I pray that they benefit from those insights.

I remember flying off the swings and seeing how far we could go. We used to play a game that I think we called “ditch-em,” where we ran all over the campus. It was our form of tag and capture-the-flag (which we also played). I was on the soccer team from fourth grade to 12^th. I tried playing on the basketball team but usually sat on the bench. I had no talent. I remember using the AWANA circle that was painted in the asphalt for a kickball game most mornings. I remember lining up and singing and saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I could go on and on but there are some great memories that were made on those seven acres (later to become 9 when they bought the land next to ours that had an old house on it).

I wasn’t the most popular but almost everyone knew who I was because of playing sports, being in the choir, preacher boy, and I spent a majority of my life on that campus. My best friend all through school was Andy. I very briefly dated one girl the fall of my senior year and I never really worried about having a girlfriend, although there was one that I had a crush on for years. I was sheltered and in a bubble. Which, at the time, I thought was a good thing.

For me, as with everything I’ve done, going to TCA had its negative and positive affects on me but overall I view it as a positive chapter in my background. I was a great experience and I will never forget the many years I spent going to TCA and the number of people that I met along the way.