AFSpeak

Being in the military has its odd moments. Suddenly you find blousing straps all over the house, wedged inside a book, or inside a crock pot, at times the amount of black shirts and socks in the laundry will make you feel like you married a goth, and you learn to think nothing of phone calls in the middle of the night. But the most intriguing aspect is probably the lingo. The military has a language all of its own, which mainly consists of acronyms. My husband likes to call it the alphabet soup, and that’s exactly what it is.

So a friend of mine and I may have a conversation that goes something like this:
“Hi, it’s Kay, any news on your friend’s PCS yet?”
“No. Her husband is still TDY, but she ran into his CO the other day, and he said no PCS date had been set yet.”
“Wow, that is weird. Maybe it’s different when you’re PCSing in CONUS? When we came back from overseas, our DEROS was pretty much carved in stone”
“Yeah, when Brandon finished OTS, we pretty much knew where we were headed.”

Translation: A friend, whose husband is deployed, is supposed to move, but she still doesn’t know when. Her move is within the US, and perhaps that makes the difference, because when you’re stationed overseas, you always know when you’re coming back, and the same applies to people who have just completed officer’s school.

Or another friend of mine and I may complain in the following manner:
“I can’t believe you’re moving to this ritzy beach town”
“Yeah well, you should see the housing prices. Thank goodness for BAH”
“I know. Wait until you go overseas. Moving back here was such a shock; not only did our BAH pretty much disappear, but we lost our COLA too.”
“But at least you have Walmart here. Not just the crummy BX.”
“Well yeah, but you should have seen the BX at the KMC. It was enormous, and we had two to choose from. I mean, AAFES actually meant something over there.”

Translation: Without their housing allowance, military families would probably be living in boxes. Overseas, this allowance is augmented with additional funds to compensate for higher local prices. Each base has its own department store, but the one on base here isn't that impressive, while the military service provider constructed a much larger department store at an overseas base.

My first spouse’s club meeting included a long whining session about DEERS, the scary lady at MPF, and the IAACS system. These are all things you need to know about and do something with in order to get into “the system” and on base. At church we offer to take left-over food to the LES desk, not the police headquarters, and we call summer camp VBS. Your children, if they’re very little, attend the CDC, your spouse wears BDUs or ABUs if he’s more up to date, you know not to talk about too much because that would not be in line with OPSEC, and you may be elligeble to enter in the STAP program, and if you’re not, well, that would be a SNAFU.

Wow? Yes, wow! I have never quite understood the need for the enormous amount of acronyms the air force uses. Why we can’t just say “police” or “department store” is beyond me. Although I have to admit that it does help when you’re overseas and slightly lost in a foreign town, and you suddenly hear someone say “BX” or "AAFES"; you know you’ve just been saved.

In the end it all boils down to the fact that you say tomato, and I say MRE.