Well, I blush to tell you how long ago it was that I was in grade school, so my memories are practically unconnected with the present day. I was living as a dependent on military bases during the 1950's and 1960's, if that helps.

In my olden days, the dependent misbehavior on base was the responsibility of the service member. So if a kid screwed-up, the military parent could get called on the carpet by his C.O. That tends to put a damper on a lot of misbehavior. Also, family members had no expectation of privacy. That means constitutional protections afforded families in civilian life were not extended to folks behind the wire.

And there are some things that civilians never understood. I don't know if its still the case but a dramatic thing used to happen at 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM at every base I lived on as a kid. I'm curious how many of you know what that is (or was). In one of my first conversations, my wife and I both clicked on that as a shared moment, though we hadn't met.

But you sure make friends fast in school. Everybody is a transient. Two, maybe three years at a duty station then off you go. Military dependent schools were racially integrated long before civilian schools. There was more separation by Daddy's rank than by pigmentation. In the imperfect lense of childhood memory, I never recall racial problems in school. The military was integrated early in the '50's, I think. So I was in school after integration had already occured.

Military men (back then, there were almost no women) especially enlisted, tended to marry outside of racial groups at a much higher rate than civilians. Consequently there was a large population of mixed-race children. Becuase of frequent moves, there would be a variety of accents and second languages, too.

My wife grew-up in an Air Force family (her dad was an E-10 at retirement, worked on Minuteman guidance systems in SAC) and my dad retired O-5 Navy. The shared background made becoming friends and lovers and wedded pretty smooth.

B

PS "Parasitic junk". Ever seen the movie, "Brasil"? That junk envelopes and cocoons the unwary.