Military spouses are just as resilient (and sometimes just as crazy) as their uniformed husbands and wives. They are the backbone of our military families, and while you’ll never hear (or read) me saying that the job of being a military spouse is the toughest job in the [insert branch here] (because I’ve both worn the uniform AND been up at 3:00 AM ironing HIS), you will hear (or read) me acknowledge that- without the support of our spouses- our service member’s jobs would be hella harder than they already are.
That’s why former President Ronald Reagan declared the Friday before Mother’s Day as Military Spouse Appreciation Day on May 23rd, 1984. Every year since, it is typical for the President of the United States to issue a similar declaration.
Here at We Are the Mighty, we decided to celebrate Military Spouse Appreciation Day the best way we knew how: by laughing at our life.
After-all, its like my crusty old Marine of a dad used to tell me “If you don’t laugh at yourself, Kate, I will. And I’m sure there’s others happy to join in.”
So in no particular order (because I can shine boots and clean a rifle, and you could cut yourself on the 45 degree angled crease of the nurse’s fold on my bed, but heck if I’m not the most disorganized wife on the block), here’s a bunch of memes that pretty much exactly describe life as a military spouse:
1. This one time, we got orders…
…And then we got different orders. And then, they came and packed the house up and took all of our sh*t and sent it to California, and THEN I said “hey remember that you just got promoted? Could that impact your orders?”
It could.
It did.
And the Marine Corps forgot to tell us.
2. Wedding vows are horribly unrealistic…
…And comedienne Mollie Gross might’ve said it best when she relayed how her husband convinced her to marry him. “Babe, you can have as many babies as you want, ’cause it’s free!”
To have and to hold, in richer and in poorer, in deployments and in field ops and in career changes and in… source
3. Civilians TOTALLY understand…
I mean, obviously they get it. I have this friend, we’ll call her Not-Amy-From-College to protect her identity. Not-Amy-From-College used to tell me ALL. THE. TIME. how she totally understood what I was going through when my husband was in Sangin with 3/5 because one time, when they’d been married for about 7 months, her husband had to take the train up from D.C. to NYC and he didn’t even come back until the next day. The. Horror.
Yes, your husband going out of town for work for an entire day is EXACTLY like my husband deploying… could you hold this bag for a moment so I can knife hand you? K, thanks. source
4. What do you mean I’m only allowed to have an MLM job or run a daycare in my house?
*BIG DISCLAIMER: there isn’t anything wrong with running your own multi-level-marketing (MLM) business or running a daycare in your home.*
The military spouse community boasts a pretty healthy number of lawyers (check out MSJDN), behavioral and mental health professionals (check out MSBHC), entrepreneurs (check out the MilSpoProject), teachers, politicians, business consultants, authors, actors — basically if it’s a grown up job, military spouses either have it or have had it.
We have professional hopes and dreams just like every other adult who doesn’t live off of Daddy’s money (here’s looking at you, Not-Amy-From-College-Who’s-Identity-We’re-Quasi-Protecting).
5. Drama… drama everywhere…
I’m only partially joking with this one. We’ve lived in some excellent housing communities where, seriously, our neighbors were the bees knees. And then? We’ve lived in communities that made Degrassi look like a family TV show that came on between “Boy Meets World” and “Step-By-Step.”
I think most military spouses can appreciate this one if they’ve lived at multiple installations.
6. Finally found my daughter’s kindergarten graduation cap that accidentally got packed a month before graduation…
And it was only eight years after her kindergarten graduation.
Other things we thought were lost in a decade and a half of PCSing:
- A Dell computer
- An elephant tusk carved out of fish bone that looks suspiciously like an adult toy that caused my husband a rather embarrassing stop and search in a Japanese airport but that I am still laughing about 13 years later
- A Japanese vase
- My DD214 and military medical records
- Wedding band (I’m still holding out hope that that one is in a box and really didn’t get vacuumed up like my daughter insisted)
- A metal canister of Maxwell House coffee
7. No one cares what you think, Judy Judgy McJudgy-Pants
This one is so true it needs two memes to make sure the point is made. People are judgy and rude.
When people judge military members, they get labeled as unpatriotic and it’s done. When they judge military spouses, they get laughs, some cheers from a select few military members who lack integrity and good character, and maybe a few frowns from everyone else.
But military spouses are used to it. And that’s just a sh*tty deal all around.
To be honest, we’re just people who are married. Being military spouses doesn’t make us any more or any less likely to be a) a mess, b) unfaithful, c) fat, d) Wonder Woman or e) all of the above
8. From military spouses everywhere…Dear deployment: you suck…
Deployments make warriors out of princesses, men out of boys, and they separate the strong from the weak.
But even the strongest feel exceptionally weak sometimes, and we hate that.
This is, of course, when we put our big kid pants and our gangter rap on, and we handle it.
9. Operational Security pisses us off…
But it must be done.
That doesn’t mean we want to deal with the OPSEC police. You know the ones: Becky just posted “Missing my soldier today on his 21st birthday!” And Bernice, who’s husband is a fearsome E4, busts into the convo with “OPSEC ladies! You don’t want the enemy knowing when his birthday is if he gets captured!”
Hey Bernice, if he’s captured, he gives his name, rank, service number and date of birth. Go haze yourself.
But seriously, we do take OPSEC and PERSEC (personal security) seriously.
10. Someone must have a death wish
So… you decided to go to the commissary on pay day. That is either the bravest or stupidest thing you’ve ever done.
Jury is still out.
