any military brats out there?
 

I met someone the other day in the school cafeteria and we got to talking about where we were from. This is always a hard question for me because I was raised in an Air Force family, so I moved around a lot as a kid. Now, this isn't something I think about very often - it isn't even something I would consider to be a basic part of my identity, even though it was obviously a formative element of my childhood.

The girl I was talking to thought that moving around must have been traumatic as a child, but I don't think it was. It started so young that I didn't know any differently. Growing up on a military base meant that I was surrounded by kids who moved around a lot as well - so none of us thought about it too hard.

Anyway, I got to thinking about what effect this has had on me, now that I am pretty much an adult. I realize that I tend to have a lot of friends that I can hang out with - meeting new people is not really all that difficult or intimidating. For instance, I think that the college (my first school and when I transferred) transition went much more smoothly for me than many of my peers. However, I do tend to be an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of person. What I mean is that if I leave a place, I'm not very good at keeping in touch with friends - I don't really write or call that much. This doesn't make them less of a friend. In fact, when I run into people or talk to them after a while, I find that I very easily pick up where we left off. I think this can be disconcerting to people that don't feel the same way.

I was just wondering if there are any other military brats on TFP that have thought about this...

I'm not a military brat, but I went to an international school where the average student stayed around for only about 3 years. Hence we had a lot of new people coming in every year.

I don't know if it has made me better at going out and meeting new people (but then again, I stayed in the same place for 12 years while others came in and out). I think it has made me and most everyone else who went there very receptive to new arrivals where we are.

I am so much of an "out of sight, out of mind" person that it's crazy. Likewise I don't really feel the effects of a long time out-of-touch when I run into someone again.

I had never really thought that there would be a connection between my childhood environment and the nature of my friendships, but I think there is.

Thanks for giving me something to think about.

My dad was in the navy till I was about 3, so I'm not sure it counts because it was so early. But we lived in Omaha, Brooklyn, Norfolk, and a number of other places before my mom finally got tired of moving around and settled in Minnesota and just waited for him to be discharged. I don't have many memories since I was so young, but lots of good stories (via mom) about all the places we lived.

Yeah, from what I hear, the Navy is an even more extreme version since regular duty (even in peacetime) requires families to be split up. My dad went away a few times on TDY, but we are talking a couple of weeks at most, like a business trip. These Navy guys leave for months at a time. I remember the wive's club had this saying about being a wife was the hardest job in the service. I think there was some truth to that.

I've moved around every two or three years, and I find it to be very much like you were saying, ubertuber. If I run into friends that I used to live with on a military base somewhere many years down the line (for example, a good friend of mine when I lived in CA now goes to school about 30 minutes down the road - on the East Coast), and we picked up our friendship right where we left off.

College is very disconcerting, in that it's the longest time period I've ever lived in a single place and consistently known the same people, but it's an interesting change. I had, though, no problems whatsoever adjusting to it, in terms of losing contact with people I used to know - because I was so used to it.