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?
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!
You Can't Make This Stuff Up
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."
Never Mind!
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!
A Bed of…?
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!
You Packed What…Where??
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!
Photo credits: marchibas, oldmn, and frender/Dollar Photo Club & Flickr user Erich Ferdinand