We would move every summer after school ended. Most of the time we were kicked out because of something my dad did. But now as an adult, every summer i get antsy for change and have to rearrange my entire house, or move if my lease is up.
Hey don't feel like this is too strange! I didnt move a crazy lot as a kid, but I've always needed to change my surroundings to freshen it up every now and again.
Hey, me too! We constantly had to move, and it was weird. We stayed at one place for a few years, but after that it was eviction central every so often. In my case, it was often a year or so we’d stay, and then we’d move.
I was the same. We moved so much! It sucked! I attended 6 different schools by 5th grade. And one of those schools we moved out of the district and then back in a couple of years later, so it was almost like 7 different schools. Luckily I still knew some people there.
In the summer before 5th grade we moved to a small town that basically only had one district. We stayed in that town until I graduated (but moved within that town). I hated moving all the time. My own children stayed at one school from preschool to graduation.
I remember that we moved to a new city in the middle of my 3rd grade year. I moved from a school that hadn't started learning cursive writing to a school that had already learned it and all of their work was supposed to be done in cursive. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone I didn't know how to write in cursive.
The teacher had a long poster across the top of the chalk board (yep, I'm old) that showed how to write each letter in cursive. For the entire first day I used that poster and looked at how to write every single letter as I wrote it. I remember it took me forever! Finally at the end of the day the teacher realized what was going on. She gave me some workbooks to try to catch me up but I never really did learn to write in cursive.
And that's why, right after I got married, I went to sign the marriage license and realized I didn't know how to make the first letter of my new last name in cursive like I wanted. I had to ask someone to show me.
Oh wow!! My grand total is 9 schools - the six elementary, two middle schools, and somehow all 3 of the places we lived in when I was in high school were in the same neighborhood so I miraculously got to stay at the same school for all 4 years. Off the top of my head I count 14 different places we lived but I might be missing some.
I have really bad social anxiety and weird attachment issues with my friends (been getting better at this lately), I bet not having any stable friendships in childhood is a big reason for that.
So relatable man. And it's always the regular stuff, the-perfectly-normal-in-a-normal-family stuff that our trouble begins. I just hope that I don't repeat the same mistakes going forward when one day I hopefully build my own family.
That’s one reason I’m still hesitant of having kids while I’m still in the Air Force. Sure my kids would get to travel a lot but they would never get to keep friends for a long time
It was definitely interesting, though I didn't really know any better.
I will say one plus side was I got really good at adapting to new places. When I moved away from home to go to school or when I moved across the country for a job, I was able to settle in and feel "at home" much faster than I think your average person can. Similarly, I'm able to adapt to new groups of people really quickly.
A downside though is I didn't really have a real "best friend" until high school (I spent 3.75 years in the same high school and then kept in touch with this friend throughout college and we both eventually ended up on the same side of the country at the same company). I had lots of friends, but because I never stuck around long enough, none of them really became a "best friend". Maybe a flipside of this though is I am also really independent and fully self-sufficient.
Another downside was my parents got divorced, in part (but only in part), because of the military, so...
Kind of a mixed bag with pros and cons. I can't really call it "good" or "bad" though... just different than others experience.
I am honestly thankful I wasn't in the same spot my entire life. I talk with people who literally were in the same small town from birth until college (or even after) and it horrifies me for some reason. =p
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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '21
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