NO!!! I do NOT Swing!

Oh, my journey as a military spouse as had its interesting moments.  Those experiences have given me hours and hours of entertainment through the years.  Whether they were my own or something that I heard from a friend, my fascination with humanity has only grown with the passing years.

On all bases, there is the "talk."  Some of it is true, but most of it is urban legend.  On the rare occasion that it is true, my wonderment at my fellow man typically increases tenfold.  My engineer and I have a laugh, file it away for a dull moment...at which time we will, again, have another laugh.  There are handful that remain on active rotation, and this is one of them.

It was the middle of winter and my engineer was away at training.  It was just me and my little lady.  Because of the yard nazis and our garage door's tendency to not cooperate when the temperatures dipped, I had left our snow shovel and ice chipper out where I could easily get to  them.  My moments for de-icing the walk and driveway were stolen ones since I had a wee one inside.

One evening, I bundled up my little girl and went to the Shoppette to return some movies and get new ones.  While browsing through the movie section, a very casual acquaintance approached me.  Being thrilled to talk to someone who could actually talk back, I happily greeted her.  I had no idea I was about to be schooled.

After exchanging pleasantries, she came to the reason for approaching me.  Very matter of factly, she informed me that even if my engineer and I had an "arrangement" while he was gone, it was bad to flaunt it in front of the whole neighborhood.

Stunned and mute, I finally found my voice, "WHAT?!?!"  She then informed me that leaving my snow shovel out with the large head up and the garage door cracked meant that I was "Open for business."  I have to admit, I started laughing, and laughing hard.  By the time I caught my breath, I saw that she wasn't joking.  She wasn't laughing.  She was actually turning red with embarrassment. Stammering her apologies, she quickly told me to put my shovel away and left as fast as she could.

Shaking my head with amusement, I decided that it was just some kind of joke.  Nice. I told my engineer about it on the phone that night, and he got as much amusement out of it as I did.

Life continued, he came home, and the snow finally melted.  Then we got the surprise of our lives.  A friend who was a personnelist told us about an event that she was inadvertently connected to that made us look at the little reprimand in a different light.

The base had just broken up a Swingers Ring in the other housing area across base.  What I had taken as a hilarious joke was actually happening!  My quirky fellow humans were at it again.  They were having an awesome time converting urban legend to reality, morphing the precious image of the community I was trying to assimilate into.

Over the following years, I would hear people make general statements of rampant infidelity within the military community without them actually being able to name names.  I calmly state that the extraordinary has a way of overshadowing the good.  While yes, there is a major issue of infidelity within our ranks, our faithful do outnumber them.  We are just quiet and calm in our lifestyle and do not attract undue attention.