Tech School
Every job or Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) has a Technical Training School (commonly referred to as “tech school”) associated with it. You will typically attend this school right after basic training if you joined on active duty, or shortly after if you joined the Guard or Reserves.
Since I signed a four year contract for active duty, I went straight to my tech school located in good’ole Witchita Falls, TX. Tech School was 9 weeks for us Dental Assistants. For those unfortunate classmates who were selected to be Dental laboratory technicians, they woud have a total of 6 months at tech school. You can imagine how happy and relieved I was to only have to do the dental assistant portion.
This timeline is important because my oh so romantic boyfriend, Brandon OFFICIALLY proposed to me in Basic Training! Up until then we only daydreamed about what it would be like to get married and to have a life together, but we always had an understanding that it was going to be after college. I mean that just made sense, right? I don’t think either of us considered that we COULD get married anytime we wanted to as long as we were both 18 years old. (I am laughing thinking about this now because I can not imagine my daughter Camille doing this to me at 18 years old..)
The Proposal
I can remember it like it was yesterday. I received a pretty thick envelope from Brandon and could not wait to see what was inside. As I looked at the newspaper article about a young couple who “tied the knot” around Valentine’s Day at the courthouse, my heart was racing trying to make sense out of why Brandon would be sending this to me. I noticed that he had crossed out their names and wrote ours in. And at the bottom of the article it simply said “This could be us”.
WHAT!? Wait a minute! Is he asking me to marry him, like for real for real? If so when? And if so, is he saying he wants to go to the courthouse? I had so many questions!
The Suspense
Unfortunately I had to wait a few days to call because, you know, you don’t get phone privileges everyday in basic training, or at least not back when I went through. So when I finally called Brandon and asked “What are you saying? Do you really want to get married now?” He said “Yes. And I know we always said it would be after we finished college, but all I know is I want us to be together and that doesn’t require us to be finished with school or needing to save up for a wedding. We could get married NOW and have a ceremony later.” ( We have yet to have this ceremony) I knew I wanted to be with him too but this was a lot to digest. In Basic Training. Over 1100 miles away.
When Brandon came to visit during my Basic Training graduation, I knew without a doubt that marrying him sooner rather than later was what I wanted. I couldn’t wait to get to tech school so I would have more freedom and access to the telephone where we could talk uninterupted and figure out how we were going to do this.
Tech School was like College
When I finally made it to Tech School, it reminded me of being on a college campus. We had way more freedom than we did in Basic Training and the privileges increased every week. Over the next 9 weeks Brandon and I talked daily for as long as we could (considering I had to share pay phones with several other girls in my hallway). My average day consisted of going to class, the gym, the chow hall, doing laundry as needed, buying phone cards, and talking on the phone. Nothing more, nothing less. Instead of going off base, I would take advantage of everyone being gone on the weekends and be on the phone with Brandon all day..
Soon, I would be Mrs. Brandon Guthery. I couldn’t wait for graduation so I could go home and get married! Or would we be able to wait that long?…Stay tuned to find out!
