Military Living.

Being in the military means that you will move about every two to three years for as long as you're in the service. My last move before I retired was from Kansas to Georgia. Once there my wife found bats (mammals), reported them to the housing department and a few days later got a notice that she had to move one block from were we lived, at the time I was in Iraq and couldn't help her. The circle that became our little fort was filled with a range of old, young and from all over the country. My little girl became friends with a boy of her same age, both six. Once I came back home from Iraq I became familiar with the whole neighborhood and we had a bunch of Rangers, Infantry and Artillery, intelligence and Aviation, we had all kinds. Because all of us had been in combat we started to share stories, helping each other with problems readjusting. One of the children was a down syndrome child that roamed freely from house to house, just like all children in the neighborhood, they would go to my house, eat a snack, then go to another house, eat another snack, etc. My little girl and her friend (Al) were always together, after school they would do their homework and start playing outside. They were very close and at the same time they would beat each other just like brother and sister. One day another little boy came to play with them, he pushed Mimi (my baby) and Al just started to pound on that little boy screaming at him that Mimi was his best friend etc, etc. Another time Sam, the teenage girl with down syndrome, came over to watch a movie at our house, at the time Al and Mimi were close to blows because each wanted to watch a different movie. It was either Strawberry Shortcake or Power Rangers, I was about to scream at them to please pick one and stop fighting when Sam came in sat down and with hand signals indicated that she wanted to watch Scooby Doo. Both children, Al and Mimi, just looked at her and said "well I guess that we are watching Scooby Doo." BOTH OF THEM went to the kitchen, got drinks and snacks for all three of them and went back to watch the movie. It was strange to see two six year olds understanding hand language and accommodating a special needs child without hesitation and without adult guidance. All houses in the neighborhood were open to all children, every Friday we had a cook out and the whole circle would cook something, bring it to my house and drink beer outside by the fire while the children were playing outside. Many nights the children, about 6 of them, would just camp outside, get some blankets from the houses and fall asleep watching the stars, making stories about them.
Now I am retired and I have left that circle but not my friends, every weekend we get together and we just drink beer and tell stories and watch the children run all over the place, chasing dogs and cats and falling and crying and getting their butts beaten because they did something that one of us didn't agree with. The kids know that if ANY of them gets a beaten from any of the adults they are going to get another one when they get home. YES we have a great group of friends, one family is from Texas, the other one is from Alaska, another is from California, and we are from Georgia and way south of the border.
I just wanted to tell you a little bit about my group of friends.

I hope I didn't bore you with my family album.

Good night.