Living the Military Life

Yup.

It’s true.

At six in the morning you hear a recording of trumpets playing reveille every day during the week.

This is just one of the many things you encounter if you live on a military base.

I know many of my readers are not military so I decided to do a post on what it’s like living on a military base.

As I mentioned before, at six in the morning the trumpets go off. You’ll want to kill the trumpets. Or maybe I just want to kill the trumpets.

If the trumpets don’t wake you up, the jets will. Sometimes they buzz your entire house to the point where you think “earthquake?” Or, you start to panic that it’s going to crash right into your home. I thought this once while in Wyoming and braced myself against the wall.

Not that standing against the wall would help.

At the grocery store (or commissary, as it’s referred to on the base) your items are bagged and wheeled out to your car for you.

You need to tip the baggers though. Otherwise they get cranky.

It’s sort of awkward standing there as someone else puts your groceries into your trunk. I always want to help. I tried once and got my hand slapped. So I’m assuming I’m not supposed to help.

Before you do most things on the base, you’ll need to show your ID card. If you don’t do this, people automatically assume you’re a terrorist.

I’m kidding.

(And your ID picture is rarely attractive. It’s sort of like your driver’s license photo. Unless you actually look nice in yours, in which case, I hate you.)

But really, they stare at you until you show it. You can’t buy a thing without flashing your card. It especially stinks when they do random ID checks when you walk into a store and said ID is at the very bottom of your purse. Then you’re digging through all your receipts and coupons and the person sighs and shifts their weight from one leg to the other all dramatic like.

There’s a store called a BX (base exchange) and it’s like a mini (MINI) Target. Everything is tax free.

This is just a small snippet of what military living is like. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.

But for now, I better make sure I have my ID ready to go.