The Way of Things To Be, Me

My life has been a never ending road trip

It wasn’t by choice but birth.

My father worked in the space and defense business. Where the work went, we went.

And the work went a lot of places.

Gemini. Then Apollo. Then the A-10.

Those are big names in American history. Rockets that carried men toward the moon. An airplane built to protect soldiers on the ground.

For most folks, they’re chapters in a book.

For me, they were moving boxes.

Every new program meant a new town. Plattsburgh, way up in New York near the Canadian line. Lompoc, out on the California coast. Lancaster, in the high desert of the Antelope Valley.

And a string of places in between that I couldn’t list for you if I tried.

When you’re a kid, you don’t get a vote. The boxes come out, the house gets packed, and the car points down a new road.

I went to more schools than I can name. I’ve honestly lost count.

Every one of them started the same way.

A new building. A new hallway. A room full of faces that already knew each other.

And me, standing at the front, being the new kid.

Always the new kid.

If you’ve never been the new kid, let me tell you what it’s like.

Everybody looks at you. Nobody knows you. The friendships in that room were made years before you walked in, and there’s no seat saved for you.

So you learn to read a room fast. Who’s in charge. Who’s mean. Who’s kind. Who’s safe to sit next to at lunch.

You learn it in a day, because you might not have a month.

And just about the time you finally made a friend, the boxes came out again.

That’s the part nobody talks about.

It’s not the leaving that gets you. It’s the friendships that never got the time to take hold.

Kids who stay put grow up with the same friends from first grade on. Those friends help shape who they are.

I never had that long enough.

So I had to build my mind on my own.

Every thought I had, I worked out by myself. By the time I’d found somebody to share it with, we were gone.

That makes a boy grow up different.

It makes you adapt. Every new town, a new set of rules. You learn to bend without breaking, because you don’t have a choice.

It makes you watchful. You’re always studying, trying to figure out how a place works before it figures out you’re not from here.

And it makes you independent. When you’ve had to stand alone that many times, you get good at it.

Never a landing. Always a stopover.

That’s what my childhood was.

I finished up at Antelope Valley High School, out in Lancaster. By then I’d been the new kid so many times I could do it in my sleep.

I’ll tell you about my first real job.

A country store called Spencerville Market. A dollar and a quarter an hour.

That doesn’t sound like much now. But it was the first money I ever earned with my own two hands. Stocking shelves, sweeping floors, carrying groceries to cars.

It taught me something no school ever did. Show up, do the work, and people will count on you.

Then Uncle Sam came calling, and the traveling picked me up again. This time it carried me clear across the ocean to Germany.

Another new place. Another room full of strangers. By then I knew the drill.

Here’s the part that surprised even me.

When I finally came home and got a chance to stay somewhere, I stayed.

Twenty-six years at California Portland Cement.

Twenty-six years in one place. For a boy who never got past one school year in the same town, that was something.

Maybe that’s what all the moving did. It made me hungry for ground that wouldn’t shift under my feet. When I finally found some, I planted both boots on it.

Now, I don’t blame my father for any of it.

He was part of something big. Men were going to the moon, and he helped get them there. The moving was the price of that, and the kids paid part of the bill.

That’s just the way of things.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand, now that I’m old.

What was put on me became part of me.

The adapting, the watching, the thinking things through on my own. All of that got built into me in those stopovers.

It’s how I’ve faced everything since.

When I sit down to write, I’m still that new kid studying the room. Still working things out alone.

The difference is, now I get to decide where I go.

My body doesn’t travel much anymore. But my mind does. A thought shows up, and I follow it wherever it leads.

For the first time in my life, the traveling is my choice.

That’s the “to be” part.

For most of my life, the road was chosen for me. Now I’m choosing it for myself.

That’s the way of things to be.

Me.

Let me turn it to you now.

Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about. Military kids. Preacher’s kids. Kids whose folks followed the work wherever it went.

If that’s you, hear this.

It wasn’t your fault you never fit in. You were doing the hardest thing a kid can do, which is starting over and over again.

And it built something in you. The ability to walk into any room and find your feet.

That’s not nothing. That’s a gift, even if it didn’t feel like one at the time.

If you grew up in one place with the same friends your whole life, count that blessing too. Call one of those old friends this week. Some of us never got to keep one that long.

As for me, I’ve found my landing.

It’s right here, on this page, with you.

Took me a lifetime to get here.

I think I’ll stay a while.

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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.

” Attic Thoughts”-library – Intelligent People Assume Nothing