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    A Funny Thing Happened During Our PCS...

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    Any military family that's survived a couple of moves has experienced firsthand the truth behind the saying sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. For instance, have you ever found any of the following when you've unpacked after a move?

    • Household goods that you know aren't yours
    • Perishables accidentally packed that are now...not quite so fresh
    • The toilet brush packed with your kitchenware

    What would you add to this list? While "mispacking" is common, Murphy's law usually reigns in other areas, too. MilitaryByOwner's staff and writers share a few more funny PCS move stories!

    Graphics guru and Customer Service Christy Shields has these memories: 

    You Can't Make This Stuff Up

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    During one move, I ended up taking a long cross country flight with two bottle-drinking little ones. Barely making it to the airport on time, my sister had dropped me and all my baby accoutrements at the airport curbside. On her way home, she happened to glance to the side and her stomach dropped as she noticed my cool little travel pack loaded with 6 baby bottles…

    On our last PCS move, our movers were so diligent that they packed a nearly empty carton of milk! When I pulled it out of our dish pack on the other end, I started humming the song, "Things That Make You Go, Hmmm."

    Karina Gafford, MBO Staff Writer, shares a few strange experiences of her own: 

    Never Mind!

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    About six weeks before our scheduled PCS to Okinawa and four months into our dog's quarantine period, and about one week before we had intended to put our car on the Pacific-bound ship, my husband received an email. Apparently, the multitude of shots we had all received (including the dog) and the job resignation letter I had submitted were unnecessary. A "must fill" position came available about then 30 miles away from the assignment he was in at the time. Bummer!

    Where Are You?

    It was a Tuesday at 10 a.m., and I was enjoying a quiet cup of coffee at home when the phone rang.

    "Are you sitting down?" my husband asked from the other end of the line.

    "Yes..." I replied hesitantly.

    "We have orders to Florida..." he, too, sounded hesitant.

    "Great!"

    "I need to report there in 10 days."

    "What?!?!?!"

    Apparently someone forgot to notify him! 

    Mary Ann Eckberg, MBO Staff Writer, is the queen of finding the funny in any situation: 

    A Bed of…?

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    As newlyweds, my husband and I were caught up in the excitement of our first military move and didn’t research what we should expect our moving crew to do to protect our goods. As our moving van became filled to the brim, the packing crew had not plastic wrapped or placed our mattress in a box. It was simply the last thing shoved onto the truck before they drove away.

    When the moving van arrived at our destination, the first thing the crew did was take our mattress out and lay it out on the front lawn, right on the grass. The adjoining neighbors had just watered the lawn, so not only was our mattress now a giant sponge, soaking up sprinkler water, but throughout the course of the long day, it became a refuge for a variety of ants and chiggers. When I came around the corner of the front yard and found where our mattress had been tossed, I startled a bird nesting in the tree overhead and it pooped down onto it. Lovely. Needless to say, our first purchase at our new assignment was a new mattress!

    And yours truly, MBO Content Editor Jen McDonald has had more weird PCS events than she can actually remember at this point:

    You Packed What…Where??

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    Some strange things have happened during pack out which we don’t find until we unpack boxes at the other end. In no particular order of weirdness:

    1) Unpacking a box that had been in storage for 6 months, at which point it was quite aromatic, and finding an open bottle of Tabasco sauce at the bottom, along with a half-eaten sandwich which had seen better days. No one in our family eats Tabasco…

    2) A Snickers bar with one bite out of it. (Oh, what a waste!!)

    3) As the movers unloaded our giant bookshelf we used to store board games, little game pieces began falling out of the bottom of it. Apparently, the movers on the packing end had simply wrapped the entire shelf in brown paper, rather than go to the trouble of packing each game, before sticking it on a ship about to cross the Pacific!

    What's YOUR strangest PCS story? We'd love to hear it! And for more laughs, be sure to download #4 in MilitaryByOwner's series of PCS e-books, You Gotta Laugh: Funny PCS Stories That We Had to Share! 

    You Gotta Laugh! Funny PCS Stories E-book

    Photo credits: marchibas, oldmn, and frender/Dollar Photo Club & Flickr user Erich Ferdinand 

    Jen McDonald

    Author

    Jen McDonald

    Jen McDonald is the Content Editor for MilitaryByOwner Advertising. She's a longtime writer, the author of the books You Are Not Alone: Encouragement for the Heart of a Military Spouse and Milspouse Matters: Sharing Strength Through Our Stories. Jen is also the host of the Milspouse Matters podcast, and has written hundreds of articles and essays which have been published in other books and numerous publications. She was a military spouse for 30 years and is the mom of four, including one son in the military. One of her happiest roles now is being a grandmother. She and her veteran Air Force husband have been stationed all around the world from Europe to the Pacific and won’t count how many houses they’ve lived in because that would be too depressing. Her passion is encouraging young military spouses and regularly sharing about topics like military life, parenting, homeschooling...and now grandparenting! See more from Jen at her site, Jen McDonald and find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram , and Pinterest.

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