by Kevin Porter

Created on: April 29, 2009   Last Updated: December 09, 2009

Rule of Thumb:

Cogito ergo sum. Descartes' famous proof, founded on the premise that possession of thought validates existence, did little to solve the three fundamental questions of philosophy. Those questions I have often pondered and they are as followings. Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? As a rationalizing being, I have never been able to establish a satisfactory answer to any of them. All I really do know and can claim for my own is the life that I have been privileged to lead.

I was destined to begin my life as the son of a career member of the United States Air Force, which made me a so-called Air Force Brat. Though I did not like the moving around part of being an Air Force Brat, it did allow me to make a lot of good friends. However, my faith in fate comes from me fortunately finding my soul mate as an eighteen-year-old Air Force Brat. I found her six months after my thirteenth move and the strangest circumstance of that magic moment is that I was not even looking for a girl. Consciously considering my childhood, I can confidently claim that my cognitive memories must certainly rival the recollections of any nomadic wanderer. As far back as I can remember, I was always moving form place-to-place, calling many a house my home but never staying anywhere for long.

Luckily, through the use of the Internet I have managed to at least regain a few of my former friends, after more than 30 years of disassociation. Nevertheless, it is quite understandable that when I was fifteen-years-old and moving for the eleventh time in my short but sojourned life, I was void of any emotion towards severing my social bonds and relocating. Totally mundane at the time, several years later I would realize that the place I was about to move would prove to be the place where my fondest childhood memories were made. With that realization also came a strong sense of regret, for having to have left that place, when the time came, far too soon. I find solace in fathoming it as a figurative steppingstone along destiny's convoluted pathway.

The move my family was making was a so-called P.C.S. move, my eighth one. P.C.S. is simply the abbreviation of the military term, Permanent Change of Station and with me making my eighth one in only fifteen years, it must certainly be appreciated that there is really nothing permanent in such a change of station. However, being the Air Force family that we were, we justified such moves as doing our part to ensure the

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