High School for Dad

Perhaps my high school experience is best remembered by quoting my mother sometime in my junior year. She said, "Do you have to always be a joiner? You join everything!".

Perhaps I did. I played on the football team my freshman year until I ruined my left knee "driving" against a tackling dummy. I played basketball all four years. I was the baseball team manager, and got involved some in track and field throwing a softball and the shot put. I was in the band playing the sousaphone for the first three years, and in the school chorus all four years. I was in every play that the school produced (2 per year) all four years, and was involved as freshman class president and student body president my senior year.

Sounds really impressive until you realize that there were only 149 kids in my four year school, and only 25 in my graduating class. I know that none of you can even begin to understand what that is like. For instance, I knew EVERY kid in my school. Some more than I wanted to.

It helped, too, that my father was the school superintendent.

Another reality was that I was the only LDS kid in my school until I was a senior and my sister was a freshman. So, there was no seminary -- early morning or otherwise.

My day typically started at 8:00 walking -- literally -- across the street from my house to the high school. One of the perks for the school super.

Classes were always with a group that I knew, and with teachers well known to us all. A function of our small size. After school there was basketball practice or play practice or something.

I was also involved in things like Boy's State and dramatic reading competitions.

I have to admit that my high school years were very fun years. They were not without the challenges that every teen has to meet -- part of growing up. And, the preferred colors for being "cool" were pink and grey.

But, we didn't even know what drugs were. My classmates were into drinking, only. If we won a basketball game, they drank to celebrate. If we lost, they drank to drown their sorrows. I was a challenge to them in that regard. One of my classmates threatened to hold me down, force a funnel into my mouth, and pour beer down me until I drowned. That was going to occur on graduation night, but he became far too emotional that night to even remember his threat.

Life is always what me make of it, isn't it?