An Army Brat, and the Lasting Effects of an Unkind Word

My father was in the Army, and when I was very young, the Army sent us to Germany for a couple of years. 2nd though 4th grade, if I remember correctly. To me it seemed like my mother took us EVERYWHERE in Western Europe during that time period. France. Italy. The U.K. Ireland. All over Germany. Probably a bunch of other places I don’t remember. Even when it was happening, even when I was really young, I thought it was very cool.

After we returned to the US, I did 5th Grade at St. Bede, a parochial school in Alabama, I think it was (still is?) near Maxwell Air Force Base, where my father was stationed while he completed some mandatory professional military education.

Many of the places we talked about in class in 5th Grade, I had been. Stonehenge? Check. The Colosseum in Rome? Yeah. Blarney Stone? Kissed it. Leaning Tower of Pisa? I have photos. Pompeii? Just as creepy as you think it would be. WWII battle sites inside Germany? Please. I slid down the Nazi salt mines. Hitler’s bunker? Yeah… now that I think about it, actually, I’m not sure if we went there or not. It’s basically just a dirt parking lot these days anyway. My early life as an Army dependent involved all of that plus the places I had already lived inside the U.S., including California, Arizona, and North Carolina. So, in typical youthful exuberance, whenever any of these things came up in my 5th grade class at St. Bede, I would of course mention that I had been there.

Apparently that happened once too often, and my teacher, in a parent-teacher conference with my mother, told my mother that I was lying about all of the places I have been in the world (which, let’s be honest, was only parts of Europe and the continental U.S.; it’s not like I was a full-on globe trotter). My mother corrected her and let her know that I had, in fact, been to all those places and I’m not a liar.

My mother told me about this incident when she got home from the conference, of course, and it broke my heart. My classmates were skeptical that I had been the places I had been and done the things that I had done, because it was so far outside of anything they experienced in their little Alabama town that they couldn’t conceive of a peer doing anything else. That was OK; even when I was young I knew kids could be cruel. But I loved my teacher, and I was not a liar. It made me very sad that she thought I was lying all this time. I don’t think I told another story about places I had been for that whole school year, and for many years after that. Obviously, it made an impact on me because 40+ years later, I still remember it.

A far better way for the teacher to have handled that situation would have been something along the lines of, “Charlie sure seems to have traveled to a lot of places already in his young life! Rome, Paris, London, Berlin… it seems like every time we talk about a place, he tells us has been there.” That would have given my mom the chance to say, “What? LOL, no. Charlie has never been out of the state of Alabama,” which if that had been the case would have allowed the teacher to confirm her suspicious and then they could have talked about my lying problem. Or, because I wasn’t lying, my mother could have said, “Oh yes! His father is in the Army and we lived in Europe for three years. My husband and I dragged him all over the place, showing them all of the sights and blasting Sha-Na-Na the whole time,” which would have saved the teacher some embarrassment and me some deep disappointment.

But that’s not what happened.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because recently I went to a doctor’s appointment and the below cartoon was on the receptionist’s monitor.

“Leaning Tower of Pisa? I’ve been there,” I said.

To myself.

Because I still remember 5th grade.

I haven’t always been good about it, but this incident made me try to always ask questions and gather information first before assuming the worst about someone. That was good. But it also made me reluctant to open up to others, because they might make fun of me or think I was lying. And that has been very bad. All because of a thoughtless, unkind word about an enthusiastic 5th grader.

Thanks, Mama, for carting us all over Europe when we were young, and all over the United States when we were older. Thanks for making sure I got cultured, by making me take piano lessons, and sign language lessons, and square dancing lessons. Thanks for making me listen to the soundtrack of Cats for so many times that I still remember some of the songs. I still know the Chigger Song and the chorus for Tie a Yellow Ribbon. I can still whistle the tune for the theme song of “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.” and I probably still know most of the musical Cats. And thanks for sticking up for me when my 5th grade teacher thought I was a liar simply because it blew her mind that a 10-year-old kid had been to a bunch of places overseas that she hadn’t.

Mrs. X, you were a great teacher. I’m sorry you thought I was a liar.

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Charles served over 27 years in the US Army, which included seven combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with various Special Operations Forces units and two stints as an instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He also completed operational tours in Egypt, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea and earned a Doctor of Business Administration from Temple University as well as a Master of Arts in International Relations from Yale University. He is the owner of The Havok Journal, and the views expressed herein are his own and do not reflect those of the US Government or any other person or entity.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.