April is the month of the military child. All month articles have been showing up on my news feed talking about how maladjusted military children are.

We have to say goodbye to parents as they deploy or forever should the worst happen.

We uproot and move away from friends every couple years.

We have to change schools so many times that we can’t remember what curriculum went with which school.

How could we possibly come out of this life unscathed?

I might be in the minority here but I saw my life as a brat in a completely different light. I was born on a military base in the middle of nowhere. (Let me tell you how much fun it is if I need to get a copy of my birth certificate!) From there we went to another base. And another. And another. I went to three elementary schools, three middle schools, and amazingly enough only one high school. By the time I had graduated high school I moved 7 times in 17 years. Not nearly as bad as some other brats but it certainly made it interesting to keep up with friends. Especially in the days before email! I had to use good old fashioned snail mail if I wanted to carry friends from duty station to duty station.

My sister and I attended homecoming in color coordinate navy outfits. We met the Easter bunny and some very scary Santa’s at command events. My mother was an ombudsman, which meant having a new phone line put in our house that we knew we weren’t allowed to use. I got to run around an aircraft carrier at 12 years old on a Tiger Cruise. We got to attend special events, like when our father was pinned as a Chief.