Well, moving day has come once again for us and as the packers box up the last few items of our wayward homestead I'm trying to recount all of the different moves that we've made over the years. And by and large, (with the remarkable exception of our last moving experience from Germany), we've fared pretty well: no lost or damaged items and almost everything arrived either on or ahead of schedule. Amazing results considering some of the other moving horror stories that a few of our friends have experienced.
On the average, a typical Navy family will experience a PCS (Permanent Change of Station) move about every 4-6 years. This average accounts for service members taking follow-on jobs in the same area as the last. There are a lot of Navy people who have served their entire careers in San Diego, never once having PCS'd, which has prompted my recent slogan with which I've been taunting these 'fixtures': "Join the Navy. See San Diego County". These type of folks seem to have an absolute aversion to moving anywhere, much less over-seas. I don't bear any particular resentment towards these folks, mind you. It's a really tough time to try and sell your house and move away. ...But you're in the Navy for Christ's sake! This ain't no hometown militia! (This subject broaches my other pet peeve which is the overwhelming number of people in the Navy who cannot swim. But I'll save that grievance for another forum somewhere else further down the road).
...But if they won't go, then who will? Enter: my little nuclear family of flying Gypsies. It's seemingly a different job on a different continent every I time I roll the dice, as it were. Like a pack migrant workers following the cucumber harvest, we go where the flyin' is. We've actually bagged some very good jobs in the Navy on the pure merit of the fact that we will (hold on to you hats folks) actually move to where the cool jobs are! 11 years in the Navy so far and - (let me count 'em) - 8 moves under our belt. That's an average of one move every 16 months for the last 11 years. 6 of those moves were inter-continental. (That average doesn't even include our piddly little initial move down to Pensacola, nor an intermediate move we made there in order to be closer to the base. Those were both amateur moves. I'm only considering PAR, no shit, full-on, pack-it-all up, complete household moves in these figures!). ...So it goes without saying that we have become somewhat "mobile". (Although "nomadic" is probably the more correct term. Or should I maybe create a word like "Bedouinian" here?).
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