The Butter Bar's Wife

My engineer's commissioning marked the birth of a military spouse.  As I pinned that gold bar on his shoulder, there was a distinct feeling that something monumental had just happened to our life together as a couple.  I had already had a taste of the exclusion that this life would bring the night before.  By pinning on that little gold bar, I had a feeling that I was sealing the deal, so to speak.

My father-in-law, who had proudly & lovingly pinned the gold bar on the opposite shoulder with tears of pride in his eyes, had said something about "Butter Bars."  Being a retired, enlisted Navy man, I knew that he was very proud of his son, the officer...even if he was in the USAF.  I will never forget the point in the commissioning when my engineer had presented my father-in-law with the first coin he would give an enlisted man.  The love in the exchange between the two of them seemed far too personal to be done in front of an audience of strangers.  To this day, it is one of the most cherished memories of that day for me.

Butter Bar.

Oh boy, does Butter Bar hold a plethora of connotation for me!  A Butter Bar is a 2nd Lieutenant.  2nd Lt. is the very bottom of the heap.  The typical 2nd Lt. is a fresh faced kid straight out of ROTC or the Academy.  The exceptions are the 2nd Lt.s who come in through OTS, who are typically older and more experienced in life. The OTS graduates have either worked in the civilian world or were prior enlisted.  Either way, they have a few years on the Academy or ROTC grads.

As mentioned above, the typical 2nd Lt. has come in straight from a college setting.  When we went in, I was shocked at how young they typically were in comparison to my engineer.  None of them had yet reached the magical age of lowered car insurance premiums. None of them were married.  For the majority of them, this was the first time in their lives when they were officially on their own in a work environment.  Obviously, my engineer and I felt pretty alone.  Though we would work at relating to them, we found it to be very trying.

There are 3 kinds of Butter Bars:

1. Those who are timid and scared to make a mistake.  These are normally the ones who will not make a decision on their own for fear of being wrong.  The timid ones are also the 2nd Lt.s who will go to a gathering, smile & nod, eat their burgers in silence, and shadow the more senior officers like lap dogs.  They were probably the brown-nosers in school and haven't outgrown it yet.  
2. The 2nd. Lt.s to whom freedom is still toxic.  Sadly, several officers NEVER outgrow this.  This is the group that hasn't learned moderation.  News of party and bedroom antics run through the base like wildfire.  Closed door meetings with commanders are constant.  The Shirt has them high on his list of "kids to watch."  They tend to be cocky and make decisions without a whole lot of thought.  
3. The 2nd Lt.s who either matured at a young age or are older.  This is a very small group.  They understand the importance of moderation and "behaving" in public.  While they may socialize in their own grade, they are also able to comfortably interact with more senior officers without making a fool of themselves.  They are comfortable with themselves as people, understanding that mistakes are part of growing...but learning from them is the key.  They also know that they have a lot to learn and open themselves up to learning from the enlisted core as well as the officer core, knowing that the enlisted have years of experience on them.  Sadly, as I stated above, this group is very small.

We fell into the 3rd, and final, group.  We were a married couple with a few years on us in comparison to the other 2nd Lt.s.  When we started this journey with the USAF, I had no idea about the social separation we would feel after entering.  While we were new to the military, we weren't new to freedom.  Upon arrival at our first location, we would discover that we really didn't fit in anywhere.

It was a miracle that we made the friends we did. Neither of us were into the "party scene."  But we didn't feel like we had to step on anyone either.  The politics among the young officer core were insane.  It felt like we had been dumped in Jr. High all over again.  The cliches, the gossip, and the "social pressure" were a new element in our lives that was NOT welcome. Throw in the fact that we were married, and we became an even stranger commodity.

All of this was wrapped up in my father-in-law's foretelling comment...Butter Bar.

Neither my engineer nor I had any idea of the cultural climate we were diving into when those gold bars were pinned to his shoulders.  All we knew was that, life as we knew, was about to change.  We would spend years biting our tongues around our peers, ever reminding ourselves that they had not crossed a certain bridge on the road to maturity.  This is not to say that we didn't meet people who we could relate to...but those people were few and far between.

So, leap we did.  Down into the deep abyss of the USAF.