  Military Mail
Always use pencil.
By Sarah Smiley
By December 15th, I had only received one Christmas card in the mail. Sure, you could guess that I only have one friend, or that I've been removed from friends' Christmas-card lists after publicly supporting Senator John McCain for President, but I knew (hoped?) that the real reason more cards had not arrived is because I've had four mailing addresses in five years. I'm so familiar with those yellow "Please notify sender of new address" stickers the post office places on envelopes before forwarding them that I don't recognize my mail without them.Then my mom called and said that she got my sons' Boys' Life magazine in her mailbox, and I knew the situation was futile. We can try and we can hope, but so long as we are a military family, our mail will never fully catch up with us
These days, my mail makes a complicated journey from Florida to Maine with a detour in Smithfield, Va., where I stayed with my parents this summer for 2 months during a PCS. Some senders will never get my information right. And I'm not going to encourage them to either. My old university, for example, which only contacts me when they want money, can send my mail to my San Diego address from 1999 for all I care. But when we're talking about my magazine subscriptions and my friends' Christmas cards, well, I get a little annoyed by the hurdles my mail must jump through.I was getting a little sad about the lack of Christmas cards until December 18th when several arrived in my box. Apparently, after the 100 or so cards I sent out last week, people finally had my new address and sent me their greetings, too. I think I did everything I was supposed to do when we moved. I filled out the forms and sent "we've moved" postcards to friends, family and subscription accounts, but so far, the only mail that is making its way to me is bills. How do THEY always get it right?
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 Do’s and don’ts while in uniform
The military service etiquette we abide by today is steeped in several hundred years of U.S. history. Many rules change over time as the military updates codes of conduct to reflect new attitudes and etiquette. |
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