Thursday, November 21, 2013

November 21 - The Rant of a Military BRAT

Beginning Word Count - 38,650

I am a Military BRAT.  For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a derogatory term that we decided to own and repurpose.  Born Raised and Trained.   I remember the first time I was called a BRAT, I was offended.  I was in line with my mother to register for seventh grade in a non-DoDDS(Department of Defense Dependant Schools) institution (incidentally, the first I was going to in a while that was non-DODDS), and this woman asked my mom what my father did.  My mom told her that my dad was in the Air Force, and she turned to me and said "oh, you're a brat").  The way she said it was highly insulting, and given that no one had ever called me that before, I was rather annoyed.  Her son had been being obnoxious, and, quite frankly, bratty during our wait, and the woman had the nerve to call ME a brat?

My mother didn't respond, but she knew I was pissed off about it.  That poor boy never recovered in my opinion.  I had a few classes with him.  I even remember his name (Richard. He went by Richie.  I called him Turkey.)  

When I was complaining about it later, my dad told me what it stood for when we Military Brat's used it. We are Born, Raised, and Trained in the Military.  We are BRATs.

And we are the ones who never volunteered.   We were drafted at birth.  Yet we DO serve this country.

We are never acknowledged, and at the end of our 'service,' we are disposed of without so much as a thank you.

When I was born, my father was stationed in Hawaii.  My mother was not able to join him there until after I had been born, so my dad was not able to be there for my mom at the time.   He was not granted leave to fly to Indiana to be there.  So my dad did not get to meet me until the doctor cleared me and my mom to fly out to join him.   I, of course, do not remember this.   But from the moment I was born, the military had an impact on my life.

Please do not get me wrong, I do not resent it.  It is the life I knew growing up, and honestly, growing up and staying in the same town your entire life is baffling to me.  I cannot imagine going to the same elementary school, junior high, and high school my entire life.  I cannot imagine what it must be like to have the same core group of friends from elementary school onward.   That is something that is beyond my reference.

If you include the pre-schools I went to, by the time I graduated from high school, I had attended eleven different schools.  I had lived in Hawaii, California, Texas, Arizona, Indiana, and England.  

I was blessed with experiences that are equally foreign to anyone who is NOT a BRAT.  I learned to drive on the wrong side of the road.  My high school French classes actually took field trips to France.   I spent part of my 18th birthday in the capitals of two different countries (London, England and Paris, France).  My high school prom was catered and held at a five-star hotel, and pretty much looked more like a modern wedding reception (without the cake, of course) than a stateside prom, where the dinner is not included and the dance is held at the gymnasium which has been decorated with streamers and balloons.  

I think every one of us knows what it means when you turn ten.  Ten is a big birthday for the Military BRAT.  It is bigger, to me, than turning sixteen for a non-BRAT.  At the age of ten, we receive our very first Military ID.  This is a passport!  With your own ID, you can enter the Shoppette (it's rather like a convenience store), the Commissary (Grocery Store), Base Exchange / Post Exchange (BX/PX) (Department Store), bowling alley, movie theatre, library, any base service all by yourself.  Before then, you had to have someone (a parent) with you to access these places.  But at age ten, you're given a key to the city and the independance to access things.   Who needs a car when you can bicycle around the whole base!    Sure, at sixteen, you non-BRATS get your drivers licenses.  But nothing is the like getting the pass to go into these places on your own.   When you are on a military base, you know what you're dealing with.  They are not laid out the same, but they are similar.  You know what you should expect to find, how to get directions, what departments are responsible for what.  They are small cities, but their government structures are reliably consistent.   They are our "home town."  No matter what base it is, it is something we can identify and be comfortable at.     Each one has something special that defines it.   They all have things that are the same.  The rules are the same on each base. 

Ours is a unique culture, and it is one that any Military BRAT can identify with -- regardless of branch of service.  Find out someone is a Military BRAT and you immediately connect.  You have a common lifestyle, even if you never set foot on the same base.   You know the New Kid In School?  In a normal school, that might be the hardest thing in the world to be.  But at a DODDS school?   No big deal.  You're new today, I'll be new tomorrow.  Welcome to Base X.  Someone is going to introduce you around and take you under their wing.   Why? Because it won't be long before they will be the new kid.  We're used to it.  The worst thing about your day is explaining how to pronounce your name.  Well, that and finding out what was covered here last year...that your last school won't cover until this year.   [Excellent point: I went to third grade in Texas.  I went to fourth grade in Hawaii.   Hawaii covered multiplication and division in third grade; Texas covered it in fourth grade.  We discovered this after I failed a math test.  I learned a year's worth of math in a week after my mother convinced the teacher I was not abysmal in math, I'd just never been taught multiplcation.  A week later, aced it!]  That's the fun stuff.  What did you miss out on because it was taught last year when you were not here? What are you going to be bored to tears over because you learned it last year in your old school?    We rattle off our bases with precision and ease.  

Most people have one or two best friends while growing up.  The military BRAT has a new one every two or three years.  I had five or six different best friends.  (I'm not in touch with any of them.)  In many ways, it is extremely hard for us to form long lasting relationships.  We're used to our friends moving every two or three years.  And if they do not, we do. 

I think it is very evident that BRATs grow up in a foreign culture.   We consider ourselves to be third culture kids.  (There is even a Facebook petition for the Third Culture Kid to be recognized.)  Even our parents, unless they are second or third generation military personnel, have little notion what it really means to be us.   My parents, for example, both lived in the same town almost all of their lives when they were young.  My dad grew up in a small town in Texas, and my mother grew up in a small town in Indiana.  They both attended school with the same people all of their lives.  

And they have high school reunions where they can reasonably expect to run into their actual classmates.

I do not.  My high school (London Central American High School) may have reunions, but it is not "Class of 1986" returning to the campus.  It is a reunion of anyone who ever went there, in some random city.... because my school is closed for one, and my school is on a military base where I would not be able to access, as I'm not military.  I don't have the identification to get on base.

They grew up around their extended families, seeing grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins on a regular basis.  For me, it took a special trip to visit with them.  I would see them for a week at a time once a year, if that.   Just on that basis alone, we differ.

But if you ask my mom where she is from, she will give you one of two answers:  Elkhart, Indiana -- where she grew up.  Or Montgomery, Alabama, where she currently lives.  The same is true for my dad:  Paris, Texas or Montgomery, Alabama.

PLEASE do not ask me.  I beg of you. Just don't.  It is the question almost universally reviled by the Military BRAT.  No matter what branch of service our "sponsor" served in, that question is fraught with traps.  Do you mean: Where do you live now?  Where were you born?  Where do you identify as home?  Where have you lived the longest?    Where am I from?   Who bloody knows?!   I'm from America, and I do not have a home town.   I was raised all over this country, and abroad.
But the one place I cannot return to is "home."   If my parents (or another military member) is not with me, I cannot go onto bases, where I might have spent time.  

The most annoying and rather heartbreaking recently to me:   A few years ago, I went to Hawaii.  I had spent six years of my youth at Hickam Air Force Base, where my dad had been stationed (once right after I was born, and I do not remember it; once from fourth to sixth grades).  I went to Honolulu, which is the big city closest to Hickam AFB.   I remember that base.    But I was not with my parents.  So I was not able to go onto the base to visit my old elementary schools, or drive down the street past my home, or go to the church I spent Sunday mornings at, or go to the movies at a theatre I used to go to, or go to the beautiful beach that is part of that base.  It does not matter that no one I knew from that time would be there, the place itself was a place I would have loved to have seen again.   I was, however, banned from visiting it.   A piece of my childhood was barred from me.

That is one of the things that annoys me most about how Military BRATS are treated once we grow up.   We served.  And we are not acknowledged.  We are discarded.  When you turn 19, if you're not in college, you have to hand in your identification card.   And when you graduate from college, you have to hand in your identification card.   You're no longer a dependant, so you're banned from the home you've known, the culture you grew up in.   Twenty-two years of service to the country, and without so much as a thank you, the military tells you to get lost.

Like spouses, we never took an oath.   But spouses get retirement benefits -- access to the grocery store (even if they divorce, if they were married for a certain period of time).   But the kids?  Screw em!   We had no say in our enlistment.  We had no options.  A spouse can always decide that this is not the life for her (or him), but the child cannot.   The child has no say in this.  They serve as long as the sponsor does.  They go where the sponsor goes.   It does not matter if they have made plans for something amazing, once orders come, those plans are discarded without consideration.   And the Military BRAT goes.  (I'm not saying they go without complaining and whining, but they DO go.)   By the way:  The big plan I missed out on?   My Girl Scout troupe trained to hike the Grand Canyon.  Between our first practice hike and our second, I found out our orders and knew I would not be on that hiking trip.  I bet it was amazing.   (The bribe?  My high school French classes spend a week in Paris, so if I took French, I'd get to go to Paris.)  I know we all have something we ended up missing, because of the Military.

But that was the job, the life, and the sacrifice.  I am extremely proud of the fact that my father is a retired Air Force Master Sergeant.  He worked for our country for over twenty years, and did a lot of important things that I know I don't know about.  Things that I am sure were more important than a hike down the Grand Canyon.   And my parents did their level best to make sure that I did not transfer in the middle of a school year, ever.   They placed a high premium on my education and worked very hard to make sure it was as consistent as possible.   That sometimes meant tutoring me to help me catch up in areas that did not overlap systems.  And sometimes, that meant sending me to my grandparents' house because my dad was transferring about three weeks after the start of school and we could not come over until adequate housing was found, and having me stay there to finish the year -- because only a couple of months remained once they did find housing.  So they made sacrifices to insure that my education was a high priority.

Still, despite the sacrifices we made, Military BRATs are not acknowledged.  The Military cares so little about us that despite the way we grow up and the life we lead and the sacrifices we make, they have never bothered to study how this life impacts us.   There have been studies of almost every aspect of child development and childhood impact...but no one has looked at how the life of the military BRAT impacts us futhur in life.  We are just not important.  We're something to be tolerated and regulated.   But not something to be respected.  Or recognized.  We are there in the shadows, standing at attention and serving our country.  

And honestly, that pisses me off.  We have been a support. We had to learn to be responsible, because OUR actions reflected on our sponsor.  Get in trouble?  you might lose your sponsor a stripe.  At best, your sponsor would get dressed down by his or her superior officer.  While your sponsor (by the way, that is the parent who is serving in the military) is active duty, and you are a dependant, you must live by certain rules outside of those your parents make.   My dad, as an active duty member of the Air Force, sacrificed his right to freedom of speech.

So did my mother and I.  So if we had wanted to protest something, we had to keep in mind how that would impact my dad's career. 

I was lucky.  My dad rarely had TDY (Temporary Duty Assignments).  He was never deployed.  But the next time you see a service member out with his or her kid, do me a favor.... thank that kid.  No one ever does.   And he deserves it too.

Today's Word Count:  2,589
Total Word Count:  41,240

4 comments:

  1. Thank you! You just described my whole childhood, from Seattle, to Germany, to Holland, to Indiana, to Colorado, to Okinawa, to Washington State.
    I absolutely loved growing up a BRAT and will forever treasure my memories!

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  2. Nailed it, Sistah. D*amn straight we served -- gave our childhoods to our country. So that turn-in-your-I.D.-and-hit-the-highway at the end is a real slap in the face that leaves a mark for a lifetime.
    The "Hickham" in my life was Andrews AFB. Passed through that area about 20 years ago and tried to get on -- had the same experience. I was lucky though. One of my Dad's friends still lived in the area and generously took the time to sponsor me on and drive me around my old haunts. It was a gift I will cherish.
    I, too, wear my BRAT label with pride (and woe to the outsider who tries to take that and make it something cutsie like "champs"). The automatic shunning at the end for those who don't join up as adults, is the price we must pay for the amazing experiences we had. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

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  3. Every Military BRAT I know understands this description of our lives. It's our story. Thanks for writing so eloquently about it. Proud Army BRAT since 1951

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  4. BRATS = Brats United!

    ~ Boldness - to daringly choose to do what is right.
    ~ Responsibility - to live in service of God, Family and Country.
    ~ Adaptability - to be at home wherever you are.
    ~ Tolerance - to enduringly love and respect everyone.
    ~ Spunk - to live as a courageously and determined spirit.

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