You Know You're an
Air Force Brat When...

Seventy signs, from a master sergeant's daughter who has packed more boxes than she's had birthdays
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Hi! I'm Kirsten Osborne. I'm 18, and as of August I'm a freshman at a state university here in Colorado, living in a dorm room the size of a parking space, which makes it the tenth bedroom of my life. My dad is a master sergeant in the Air Force (supply, so yes, he can find anything, and no, he can't get you a jet). We have moved nine times in eighteen years: three countries, five states, three high schools.

I started this list at my last high school when a girl in my English class asked me where I was from and I said "um" for about a minute. Every brat I've shown it to has added something. If you're one of us, you'll get it. If you're not, this is what it's like.

Moving and PCS Orders

You know you're an Air Force brat when...

1. You knew what PCS stood for (Permanent Change of Station) before you knew your times tables.
2. You also know that "permanent" means about three years.
3. The oldest things your family owns are the moving boxes that say KITCHEN — FRAGILE in three different people's handwriting.
4. You know to empty the trash cans before the movers come, because they will pack the trash. With the trash in it.
5. Your family has a "do not pack" room, and something important gets lost in it every single time anyway.
6. You've picked what goes in your hold baggage very carefully, because it's all you'll have for two months while everything else is on a boat.
7. Your mom has The Binder. Shot records, school records, birth certificates, orders, in triplicate. If the house caught fire, she would save the kids, the dog and The Binder, in that order, but it would be close.
8. You've lived in TLF for three weeks with four people and a cat in two rooms, and you all still speak to each other.
9. Your new base assigned you a sponsor before you even left the old one, and the sponsor's kid wrote you a letter, and you were best friends for a year.
10. You've crossed the country in the back seat with your little brother, the cat and a cooler, and you've seen every rest stop on I-40.
11. You have a shoebox of letters from best friends in four time zones.
12. Somewhere around the second Christmas at any base, your parents start saying "when we get orders," and your stomach drops.

Life on Base

13. When Retreat sounds at the end of the duty day and the flag comes down, the car stops, wherever it is, and everybody sits still and quiet till it's over. You still feel funny when you see people keep driving.
14. You can sleep through jets at six in the morning, but you wake right up when it's too quiet.
15. You know you do not go anywhere near the flight line. Ever.
16. You've shown your ID card at the gate since you were ten, and you feel naked without it.
17. You know your dad's Social Security number better than your own phone number, because you've written it on every form since kindergarten.
18. Every house on your street had the same floor plan, so you could find the bathroom in any friend's house in the dark.
19. Your dad has gotten a note from base housing about the height of the grass.
20. You stand up for the national anthem before the movie at the base theater, and the first time you went to a movie in town you stood up anyway.
21. You say "yes, ma'am" and "yes, sir" to every adult on Earth, and civilian teachers think you're being sarcastic.
22. You know what TDY means, and you know that "just a couple of weeks" can mean two months.
23. You can count stripes on a sleeve from across the parking lot.
24. You've stood on the curb at Lackland on a Friday and watched a whole flight of brand-new airmen march by at graduation, and you cried, and you didn't even know any of them.

School

25. You went to DoDDS schools overseas, where everybody was new every year, so nobody was.
26. You've been the new kid in September, in January, and once, worst of all, in March.
27. You learned the solar system in three different schools and never got to the Civil War in any of them.
28. Your high school transcript is from three schools, and the counselor at the last one had to call the other two to find out if you'd ever taken P.E.
29. You've had typhoon days instead of snow days.
30. You can make a best friend in one lunch period. You've had to.
31. You can do the accents of kids from eleven different states.
32. Your yearbooks come from eight schools, half the signatures say "Keep in touch!!!", and you actually did, with two people. (Hi, Kadena girls.)
33. You learned to count in German in kindergarten and to say thank you in Japanese in fifth grade, and you still use both.
34. At graduation you knew about forty people in a class of three hundred and eighty, and that was fine, because you knew all forty really well.
35. Your senior quote was about moving. Of course it was.

The Commissary and the BX

36. You know the commissary is for groceries and the BX is for everything else, and it bugs you when people mix them up.
37. You bagged groceries at the commissary for tips. (A year and a half of weekends at Lackland. I'm a professional. Cans on the bottom, bread on top, eggs in their own bag.)
38. You know not to go to the commissary on the 1st or the 15th, because that's payday and the whole base is there.
39. The first time you went to a grocery store in town, you stood at the end of the checkout waiting for somebody to bag your stuff and carry it out.
40. You've bought your school clothes, your Christmas presents and your prom shoes at the BX.
41. You think "Shoppette" is a normal word.
42. You forget about sales tax every single time you buy something off base.
43. The BX food court was where everybody went after school, at every base, and it always smelled exactly the same.
44. You know the mom at the next register. You know her from three bases ago.

"So... Where Are You From?"

45. You dread this question more than finals.
46. You have three answers ready: the short one ("Colorado"), the medium one ("All over, my dad's in the Air Force") and the long one, which takes ten minutes and requires a map.
47. You say you were born at Lackland and people ask you where that is.
48. Your hometown is wherever your parents are stationed this year.
49. Somebody else's kid is sleeping in your old bedroom on Okinawa right now. And in Minot. And in Biloxi.
50. When somebody says they've lived in the same house their whole life, you ask them a hundred questions, like they're from another planet.
51. You feel at home in airports.
52. When somebody tells you they're from Ohio, your first question is "Which base?"
53. You think schnitzel and yakisoba are both comfort food.
54. You can't watch the news about anywhere in the world without saying "we almost got stationed there."

The Other Branches
(We love you guys. We just love us more.)

55. You've had to explain to an Army brat that yes, our base has a bowling alley, and yes, it's nicer than yours.
56. You've explained to a Navy brat that your dad comes home at night instead of going to sea for six months, and he looked a little jealous.
57. A Marine Corps brat can do more push-ups than you. You've made your peace with it.
58. You will defend the Coast Guard to anybody, because those people go out in storms on purpose.
59. Army brats have called it the "Chair Force" your whole life, and you have a comeback ready, which I'm not printing here because my dad reads this page.
60. Deep down you know a brat is a brat. If you've moved six times, you're family.

Home Now

61. Your dorm room is the tenth bedroom of your life, and you had it unpacked in an hour.
62. Your roommate has lived in one house since she was born. She cried when her parents left. You were unpacked before your parents got back to the car. (You cried later. In the shower. Nobody needs to know.)
63. You're the only person on your hall who knows how to pack a box so nothing breaks, and now everybody comes to you at the end of the semester.
64. You get restless around the two-year mark at anything and want to rearrange the furniture.
65. You still look up when a jet goes over.
66. You still stand up when you hear the anthem on TV, even alone.
67. Home isn't a house. Home is wherever the boxes get unpacked and Mom hangs the pictures.
68. You know how to say goodbye. You're still bad at it.
69. You have friends on four continents and no idea where you'll live in ten years, and it doesn't scare you.
70. And if somebody offered you a childhood in one house in one town, you'd say thanks, but no. You wouldn't trade it.

Every Move
One of these was only from a German village to base housing ten minutes away, but the boxes didn't know that, so it counts.

And Seriously, For a Minute

I make jokes about all of this because that's how you get through it. But I want to say this part straight. My dad has served for twenty-three years. He has missed birthdays and Christmases and most of one school year, and he has never once complained about any of it in front of us. He'd do his job and come home and ask about our day like his was nothing. My mom has had eleven jobs in eighteen years, because she starts over every time we move, and she has made every single house feel like home within a week. She hangs the pictures first, before the boxes are even open, so the walls look like ours. I didn't understand how much that took until I unpacked by myself this August.

So thank you, Dad. Thank you, Mom. And thank you to every Air Force family who ever brought us a casserole on moving day. I'm proud of where I'm from, even if it takes ten minutes and a map to explain.

You are brat number

since March 1999. Welcome home, wherever that is.

Got a sign I missed? Tell me which base you're from, and I'll add the good ones with your first name.
[email protected]

Last updated Sunday, September 19, 1999