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Les Stanfield |
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09-07-01 |
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Narrative essays |
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Military on the Move |
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I'll begin by saying that I have never lived in one place for more than three years. I am an eighteen-year-old member of a typical United States military family. Some people can only image how hard that relocation is when it comes around. Even though it has its good points it is never an easy road by any means. So in turn the twenty-seven years my dad has been active in the United States Air Force I have had to make some tough transitions. |
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To say the least, we have moved a lot through dads career in the military. He joined some years before in Georgia before moving to North Carolina where I was then born. We spent a little under two and a half years there and moved to Mississippi, where my brother was born. After two years in Mississippi, we were relocated exactly every three years.� First we went to Germany, then to South Dakota, and finally to where we are now in Virginia. |
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One of the hardest things we had to deal with over the years is leaving our friends when we move from one place to another.� The longer we stayed in a place the more attached we grew to the people there, therefore making it harder and harder to leave.� The best example was when we moved from South Dakota to here.� I had a really strong friendship with a kid my age named Kyle.� We lived there about the same time that the government was doing all those base closers all over the country.� The base we were located at, called Belle Fousch, fell on the list to be shut down.� Being told that I had to leave Kyle was really upsetting.� I went because I had to and we still talk even though he is in California.� You might think that since I have been moving all my life that I would have been used to it by that point, but I wasn't. |
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The friendships aside, it is also extremely challenging to change schools so often.� When I was younger, changing schools wasn't such a big deal, but the older I got the harder it became to go from finally getting settled down and getting used to one school system, to a totally different system.� The search for a school that was deemed a better one in a particular area, wasn't easy but trying to actually fit in and get past that 'new kid stage' is psychologically demanding.� A good example of this is when I moved here in the summer before the 8th grade.� From the very start of the first day of school that year, I was being made fun of because of ways that I was different than the kids there.� (Things like the way I dressed, my southern accent, etc.)� I was okay with it for the most part, but sometimes it became hurtful.� On top of that, the schoolwork itself was difficult because I had to learn things that everyone else had already had the year before that I should have had already but didn't at my other school.� So those two problems together created friction in my push for an education. |
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Our family as a whole has had at least one significant cultural shock that has been related to all the relocating that we have had to do.� The shock came when we moved from the states to a small community in the middle of Germany around 1986.� In that small town, called Erlenbach, there were no English-speaking people within about a mile radius, besides maybe the occasional shopkeeper that spoke some English to get by.� This was very difficult on our family. We were used to the southern hospitality we had grown up in.� For the most part the German people seemed rude or crude. This was not done on purpose to harm I don't believe, but it was just how their society was.� I believe that if my dad was not in the military and we didn't have to move always I never would have experienced that. |
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The experiences that I have been able to have with moving so much and the effects that go along with it, surely aren't all bad, but they don't come on a silver platter, if you will.� Once you become more familiar with being part of a military family, you slowly realize that it is a responsibility that comes with the job.� The last twenty-seven years that my dad has been in the Air Force has had its times but in the end it turned out ok. |
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