It's a Small World, After All

I've lived in nine houses, attended nine schools, called four different states my home, and reoriented my internal clock off of three separate time zones. Not to mention, when someone asks me about all of the places I’ve lived, I can rattle the locations off in a few seconds, rapid-firing the states in order --- Texas, Kentucky, Kansas, Georgia, Kansas, Texas, Kansas. 

I realize that my list isn’t super impressive. I haven’t had an insane cross-country, 30+ hour drive to our new house. I’ve never had to help my dog get ready to be shipped across the sea in the belly of a plane. I’ve never ventured off of my military base into a world based on a language I don’t understand. 

Although I’ve never experienced those, I personally know so many people who have had those experiences, people who’ve lived for many years in the most extraordinary overseas locations. 

That thought, coupled with the idea that I attend a high school with a large military teen population, got me wondering… added all together, how much of the world have my fellow classmates and I covered? What are all the places we’ve called home? 

I decided that I needed to answer those questions. So, logically, I created a survey and published it to my school. Two weeks later, I analyzed the results!

86 military teens responded. 

Together, we’ve lived in 35 of the 50 states. 

We’ve lived in 12 countries. 

And we’ve lived in over 130 different cities around the globe. 

Let that information sink in for a minute…

If I talk to just 86 people from my school, I could hear stories about the mountains of Alaska or the oceans of Hawaii. I could hear about the deep snows of upstate New York and the humidity of Louisiana; about the blazing deserts in California and the immense forests in Oregon. Not to mention, I would hear stories from Jordan and Belgium, South Korea and Guam, Italy and Puerto Rico, Australia and Poland, and so many more places!

Without the frequent moves the military sends many of us on, we wouldn't even have these stories to share. If we weren’t uprooted every few years, we wouldn’t have had the opportunities to explore this big, unique, diverse world.

It's amazing, isn't it?

I feel so grateful for what the military has indirectly given me - a chance to expand my horizons and create who I intrinsically am. 

Finally, the military just so happened to put all of these people together in a little school in Kansas. If I can find so many perspectives here, imagine all the stories that the people around you might have...

All the places we've lived in the USA.

All the places we've lived across the globe.