Michelle,

Your upbeat nature is a breath of fresh air. I have been enjoying your contributions since you started.

Vann referred to you in one of my blogs. I would love your comments on what we both have to say. Vann and I are devoted to the brat cause so feel free to say whatever you think is right. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Your approach only brightens any room it enters. Please keep speaking from the heart and I hope this leads to even more subjects in the future.

Because you have been referred to, it is only right you keep us all straight. The name of the blog in Military Brats Online is BRATS: Where we Stand.

In kind, I shall study your blog here a little further as open minded as possible and leave you with some things that come to mind.

John

Michelle,


Your statements you make with your wide eyed enthusiasm is one that many want to identify to and makes us all feel good. This is what I love about your writing. Please don't change.

I agree with what you are saying. Even though your generalities are a bit broad for me. But then you narrow it down in the end and I feel I'm back with you.


Here's, basically, the main place I am having a problem that I would love to have cleared up. Do you mean brats when you say "The fact is we all have the same belief system...we all practice the same rituals. We all live in the same secret society if you will."

If so, I must very much disagree.

Don't you mean this applies to the people in the uniforms. Brats do not have any of these atributes. What rituals? What secret society? This is the only part that throws me off course.

I agree with your conclusion, I just don't get that quoted section above.

If I got off track somewhere, please get me back on. It's much more pleasant on your side of the world.

Thank you,

John

John, What I meant by that statement, is that we, for the most part, do the same things during our day to day survial. Stopping every thing that you're doing for the National Anthem, showing your ID card at the gate, standing before the feature film starts, again for the anthem, counting the stripes on the arm before you open your mouth!

As far as beliefs, the people that I was raised around all had the same shared, devoted love....Country. Religous beliefs aside, we where all team USA and were devoted to what ever it took to be on that winning team. Maybe that is different in other branches, bases or decades. That's just my take on our time in the service.

The secret society in my mind was always our air base. I overheard my mother once describe the base as a city within the city. That military bases were constructed so that we could live and maintain life within the gates as our own functional society. We never had to leave in order to survive if we didn't want to, or couldn't for some WWIII reason. In addittion to that, I spent my time at Offutt AFB during the end of the cold war and during the release of movie Spies Like Us. My father was back and forth to Skunk Works and often shared stories with me...it made me feel like I was a part of some secret government project that only I was privledged to. Maybe that's why I have that take on it all. I do know however, that instead of some secret knock, or a cryptic handshake to enter...you do need your ID card or the armed gaurds sent you home...so isn't what happens on the other side of that fence a secret to those that are not allowed inside?

This blog was a rambling moment, so maybe it does not ring true to everyone and every branch...It was just a thought I was having. I hope that cleared up where my head was at the time!