Growing up a military brat isn’t just a vibe; it’s a lifestyle. While other kids were measuring their height on the same doorframe for 18 years, you were treating North America like a series of unfortunately decorated holding cells.
You didn’t have regular family traditions; you had stickers on a moving box. You didn’t have parents; you had sponsors. Now, as a grown adult, you might still have some quirky habits that you can’t quite shake.
Related: 8 reasons why everyone knows you were in the military
If you have ever had to stop yourself from standing at attention during a commercial break or felt phantom panic when you forgot your ID on the way to Dollar General, you might be a MilBrat. Here are eight signs the Department of Defense raised you just as much as your parents did.
1. You Memorized Your Parents’ SSN Before Your Own Zipcode
Ask a normal kid their social security number; they will cry, then call their mom. Ask a military brat, and they can rattle off their Sponsor’s SSN faster than their own birthday. You learned it before you learned your ABCs. It was the passcode to your entire existence.
To get into the base pool? SSN. To get a teeth cleaning? SSN. You can recite your sponsor’s SSN faster than you can say ‘I love you’ to a partner. In fact, you accidentally whispered it to your prom date.
2. “Oh crap, do I salute?”
It’s 5:00 PM. You are walking through a Walmart parking lot. Suddenly, a faint trumpet sound plays, maybe it’s a ringtone, perhaps it’s a car horn.
Your body freezes. Arm and leg muscles tighten; your jaw clenches. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t lived on a post in a decade.
The Pavlovian response to Reveille and Retreat is baked into your DNA. You look for any flag to salute. You check your watch. You scream at people around you to stop moving. Then you realize you are in a parking lot near Pensacola, and nobody cares. But for that split second, you were ready to lock it up.
3. You Speak in Soldier Slang
You don’t go to the “store;” you go to the Commissary or the BX/PX. You didn’t move; you PCS’d. You don’t say, ‘Let’s leave around 5ish.’ You say, ‘Wheels up at 1700, or I’m leaving you on the tarmac, Brenda. Don’t play with me, Brenda.”
Civilians look at you like you’re speaking Dothraki when you say, “Yeah, we’re TDY to grandma’s house, but our ETA is 1800.” You treat even minor trips like a military operation because, let’s be honest, getting a family of five across city lines, without police escort, is a special operation.
4. You Still Lie About Your Hometown
This is the most dreaded question anyone could ever ask: “Where are you from?” A civilian would answer with a city and/or state. Simple.
You sigh deeply and start your Shakespearean monologue: “Well, I was born in Germany, but we lived in Fort Hood, then Bragg, then we did three years in Okinawa, but I went to high school in Virginia… so… everywhere? I’m from all of it.”
Eventually, you will just lie and say whatever state is currently on your driver’s license just to end the conversation.
5. You Can Pack a Home in 48 Hours Flat
Your civilian friends have full-blown meltdowns weeks before a move. You think that’s cute.
You have the packing game of a Tetris grandmaster. You know exactly how many boxes it takes to pack a kitchen. You know the smell and texture of that brown government packing paper. You know that if the movers are coming, nothing is safe; these guys will pack the trash can with the trash still inside it.
You are efficient and unsentimental. You would throw your own grandmother into a donation bin if she didn’t fit in the equation. “Sorry, Nan, we are over the DoD weight allowance. We’ll send your new family a postcard from Guam.”
6. You Silently Judge Civilian Homes
You walk into a friend’s house, and their walls are painted a lovely shade of “Eggshell” or “Navajo White.”
To them, it’s neutral. To you, it triggers flashbacks of the Housing Inspections. You grew up in domiciles that were exclusively painted “Government White,” with linoleum floors waxed to a shine that screams standards, as well as anal retentiveness.
You live with an irrational urge to scrub neighbors’ baseboards with a toothbrush. You don’t just see a stain on that carpet; that’s a financial penalty that could have ended your parents’ careers. You possess the ability to spot scuff marks like an eagle hunting field mice, but you’re a semi-functional adult now and would never act on such impulses… probably.
7. Phantom ID Syndrome is Real
When you turned 10, you got the Golden Ticket: The Dependent ID.
It wasn’t just a piece of laminated plastic; it was a sense of freedom. It meant you could walk to the Shoppette to buy a slushie. It meant you were your own person. But it also meant that if you lost it, you might as well run away and never look back. Your heart still skips a beat when you approach a gate, even a toll booth, fumbling for an ID card that you haven’t carried since 2012.
8. You Make Friends in 5 Minutes (and Leave in 2)
You are basically a jovial Jason Bourne. You can walk into a playground, assess the chain of command, identify a potential best friend, and bond with them over a shared love of The Office in under three minutes (bonus points if they know who Prison Mike is).
Why? Because you’re on the clock, that’s why. It’s not your fault. You learned early and often that you might not be here in six months. You don’t have time to let relationships unfurl slowly. You love hard and fast, and you are shockingly good at the “Irish Goodbyes”.
It’s not that you’re mean or rude; it’s just that you always hear that moving truck rolling down the back road of your mind.
If you nodded along to any of this, congratulations. You are part of a small, slightly neurotic club. While other kids were building lifelong memories with their neighbors, you were learning how to sleep on a plane next to a pallet of MREs.
Is it a perfect childhood? Not really. Did it leave you with a weird obsession with rules and an anxiety around white walls? Yeah, a little. But it also gave you the ability to turn “Goodbye” into a resume-worthy skill.
So you do you, MilBrat. Salute the flag in that Ikea parking lot. Use military time to schedule your date nights. Never, ever throw away a good Amazon Prime box or durable tote. And always try to remember, home isn’t the place you hang your heart. Home is wherever your ID card hasn’t expired yet.
