EPISODE 2 EPISODE 2The day after Francis and I returned from our Bermuda honeymoon in October 1993, we moved my belongings from my parents’ house in Pennsylvania to his apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, near his naval intelligence job. The morning after our move, Francis carted me around the base to get a military ID, submit health insurance forms, and obtain a pass for my car, so I could be an official, card-carrying military spouse.
Then he went to work, leaving me alone to explore our apartment.
The kitchen cupboards contained a huge plastic barrel of pretzels, a half loaf of white bread, and an expired box of Shake ‘n Bake left there by his old girlfriend. In the fridge, I found a stack of bologna, a gallon of milk, a bag of onions, and a jumbo bottle of ketchup.
I’d better go shopping, I thought. I was now a navy wife, so instead of heading to the local grocery store, I hopped in the car with my new ID and braved the tangle of highways to go back to the base for my first military commissary shopping expedition.
When I got there, I was surprised to discover the commissary didn’t look like a normal supermarket with colorful signs and eye-catching displays. The cavernous building’s austere interior was more like a drab warehouse—just row after row of groceries. No colorful advertising displays, no soothing background music, no free samples. The floors were painted with confusing directional arrows, pointing toward the front or back of the store. I looked for other new military spouses. Perhaps we might help each other? But there were none to be found. The employees were all business, and all the shoppers seemed to know exactly what they were doing.
I wandered aimlessly, following the big black arrows. Although my new military ID card gained me entrance into this bastion of military life, I didn’t seem to belong there. I felt like a fraud, like a nineteen-year-old who just got into a nightclub with a fake ID.
I completely forgot what I needed to buy. I haphazardly threw some grapefruit, oyster crackers, a pound of ground beef, a gallon of cooking oil, and a box of raisins into my cart. I despise raisins and had never purchased oyster crackers before. Overwhelmed and unable to focus, I headed for the checkout.
The cashier looked as if she’d worked there for centuries. Her movements were automatic, and her eyes seemed fixed on some distant point. I placed my meager merchandise on the rapidly-moving conveyor belt, and the items zipped away from me. The unsmiling cashier finished scanning in a flash. Fumbling to get money out of my purse, I quipped, “Whew! You’re too quick for me!” The cashier stared blankly.
A tall, thin man with a graying beard placed my paltry purchases into three plastic bags.
“Ma’am, I’ll carry these to your car,” he said.
“Oh no!” I said, trying to be polite, “I’ll carry them myself.” As I grabbed the bags and started toward the door, the smile drained from the bagger’s face.
“That’s your prerogative,” he said, crossing his arms and turning away.
Unsure what I’d done to irritate him, I scurried back to my car like a cockroach running under the pantry door.
Francis returned from work that evening, eager to experience his first home-cooked meal as a married man and to find out how his new wife had managed on her first day as an official military spouse.
He may have been puzzled by a dinner of meatloaf with a side dish of grapefruit, but all he said was, “So how was your day, Honey?” I related my commissary experience, and he immediately realized my mistake. He took a few minutes over dinner to explain that in military commissaries, the people who bag the groceries are not paid employees of the commissary. They work for tips. From customers. No tip means no pay.
No wonder the guy was irritated.
I had a lot to learn about being a navy wife. Rather than become overwhelmed overnight with paperwork, acronyms, customs, procedures, and unspoken rules of my new lifestyle, I decided I had plenty of time—an entire marriage, in fact—to become a seasoned military spouse. If I had to, I would bumble my way through, day by day, base by base, mistake by mistake, until I figured it out.
With my first commissary experience behind me, I adopted two new policies: Always tip the baggers, and never serve meatloaf with a side of grapefruit.