Moving to Phoenix, high school friends

The move to Phoenix after Lynden was the toughest one for me. It was at the beginning of 10th grade.

When I left Lynden my friends planned a surprise good-bye party. It was a slumber party in one of their garages. That was so nice of them. One picture that always comes to my mind when I think of this move is when I was saying good-bye to a bunch of my friends while standing in my grandma's back yard. We were standing by her lilac bush. I think they had walked me home on my last day at the school. We were in a circle hugging and crying. My grandma looked out and thought it was so sweet. I just was sad.

When we got to Phoenix we found a nice house off base that we stayed in - no move on base. Mom and Dad bought this house. Phoenix was a huge change after Lynden, even just the scenery. After green, green Washington I thought brown Phoenix was pretty ugly. It wasn't until I came home from Calvin to Phoenix at Christmas that I appreciated the beauty you could find in the desert scenery.

The other big change was the size of my school. I went to Apollo High School and it had, I think, something like 4000 students. I think the population of Lynden was something like 3000. I was placed in an honors class and that actually made things a little easier as far as getting to know people. One girl named Pati Z was immediately friendly. She showed me where things were and had lunch with me. It's really wonderful that there are people like that. What a huge difference it makes. Pati and I hung out together all through high school. We walked to school together and then when she got a car she picked me up every morning.

At the beginning, though, that change to the new school felt horrible. Every night I would cry myself to sleep. The only way I could calm myself down and get to sleep was to convince myself that I would just refuse to go to school in the morning.

While we lived in Phoenix we attended Orangewood CRC. We went to the chapel sometimes, too, but I became good friends with the kids at Orangewood. We had an active young peoples' group and also a choir. When I first went there, though, I was in no mood to see them as friends. After the service I rushed out to get in the car. They caught me with the car door open. I remember them standing in a half circle saying hi and introducing themselves and I thought to myself, "These people are ugly." Looking back I think I went into some kind of strange neurosis when I moved. I remember even picking ugly clothes for myself and thinking my hair looked bad but I didn't care. I always got friends pretty much in spite of myself.

The group from church became my good friends, as I said. We'd usually hang out all weekend. The older ones who had driver's licenses and cars would pick us up and we'd go to movies together, eat out sometimes, hang out at parks, at each others houses. We did some stupid stuff, like drinking, and a bunch of the kids started smoking, but we did a lot of innocent fun things, too. When we were at the park we would swing and run races like little kids. We liked playing miniature golf, too. It was nice being in a group like that.

My best friend was Cindy B. She was a couple years older than me but we hit it off. One thing I noticed and liked about Cindy was how she would laugh at herself. When she did something dumb she didn't die of embarassment, she laughed right along with everyone else and even kind of teased herself about it. I started trying to do that and it sure made life more fun.

Cindy and I house-sat at each others' houses a couple times and that was a lot of fun. Cindy had a backyard "doughboy" pool. We skinny-dipped it in sometimes. After my freshman year at Calvin we house-sat at her house and I was attending Glendale Community College. One of my classes was Biology and we'd go out to the desert to look at "micro-environments". After spending an afternoon in the desert, I'd come home SO hot. As soon as I got in the door I'd start taking off my clothes and head out to the pool. It felt great.

Another time we were house-sitting at my house and a big old cicada bug came in the house. I was home while Cindy was working and all day I'd see this bug head come up from behind the couch and throw something at it. I didn't want to touch it or kill it myself. When Cindy got home we manuevered it out the door with a broom.