Moments that changed your path in life

[Bassman]

With all the things happening over the last month, some good, some bad, some things you just have to take care of yourself, I happened to be flipping though the stations on the radio and came across some radio show that was talking about moments that changed your direction in life. The show was saying everyone has a few. It started to make me think about some of the choices I've made during my life. Like when I decided not to go back to college after the first year. What if I decided to stay instead of going back a few years later If I did I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. Or the time, I met this one girl who I was really happy with, but decided the time wasn't right for me to get married so I broke it off. ( after all I was 21 ) What if I wasn't scaried and stayed??? I think the biggest decision I made was a few years later, when I decided to leave my hometown and moved across the country to go back to school because it was too hard to finish school, because we ( my friends and I ) would go out and drink all night if you know what I mean, the only problem was, I was planning on moving back home after and I never did. It's funny how I came across this show at this time because my second oldest is in the process of being recuited to play lacrosse at the college level. How about you guys??? What moments in your life changed your direction in life??

[Kramster]

Birth (mine)

[theevan]

How do you change direction when you're directionless? (That was me)

[brucemacneill]

First hearing "The Cat's in the Cradle" when I was a couple of years into working 6 days a week and on call Sundays, 60-70 hours a week, mostly on the road missing my son growing up and going weeks at a time without seeing home. The song made me pull off the road, shed a few tears and decide what I was doing wasn't worth it after which I worked my way into a sequence of office jobs that at least got me home most nights and weekends although what state home was in changed a few times. When I started playing a couple of years ago I learned the song and can generally get through it without crying. When I put it on Youtube my son responded with "Dad, you did good" so it was all worth it. Our 42nd anniversary comes up soon and I don't think that would have happened if I hadn't changed my ways back then.

[millring]

Seeing Fingerplucked naked changed me forever.

[drlj]

Having a policeman point a gun at me after I was pulled over for doing 45 in a 35 mph zone. My reaching for my wallet was viewed as "hostile" by him. I was 17 and he was Barney Fife with the bullet in the chamber. It made me change my shorts, too.

[prodigalone]

When my mom had a massive stroke in front of me at age 5 at home alone with her. Just me, her, and the dog.

[Deleted]

Desert Storm. I was one guy going in, and another coming out. The change was for the better.

[Kramster]

Apr 21, 2012 8:33:56 GMT -5 prodigalone said:

When my mom had a massive stroke in front of me at age 5 at home alone with her. Just me, her, and the dog.

Wow...quite an experience.

[omaha]

I've always wondered if we have this wrong...that the really big inflection points in life slip by virtually unnoticed...little seemingly meaningless twists of fate that end up completely changing our ultimate direction, but that are entirely unremarkable at the time. Sort of a "butterfly effect" thing, I suppose.

A pretty girl catches your eye while driving down the street. You spend the next thirty seconds thinking about her instead of the calculus test you have in an hour. That momentary "clearing" of your mind frees you a new level of understanding of the material. You get an "A", where before you were destined for a "C". Your grade pushes up your GPA enough you become eligible for a scholarship. That gives you lots more free time, since you can quit your part time job. You start partying. You become an alcoholic. You fall into the bottle and never get out. All because a pretty girl caught your eye.

Who knows.

[dradtke]

Apr 21, 2012 7:35:08 GMT -5 millring said:

Seeing Fingerplucked naked changed me forever.

Oh come on. That happens to everybody.

[drlj]

Apr 21, 2012 9:29:56 GMT -5 @omaha said:

I've always wondered if we have this wrong...that the really big inflection points in life slip by virtually unnoticed...little seemingly meaningless twists of fate that end up completely changing our ultimate direction, but that are entirely unremarkable at the time. Sort of a "butterfly effect" thing, I suppose.

A pretty girl catches your eye while driving down the street. You spend the next thirty seconds thinking about her instead of the calculus test you have in an hour. That momentary "clearing" of your mind frees you a new level of understanding of the material. You get an "A", where before you were destined for a "C". Your grade pushes up your GPA enough you become eligible for a scholarship. That gives you lots more free time, since you can quit your part time job. You start partying. You become an alcoholic. You fall into the bottle and never get out. All because a pretty girl caught your eye.

Who knows.

Or you see a pretty girl and you rear end the guy in front of you who is sitting at the stop sign, like I did when in college.

[prodigalone]

Apr 21, 2012 9:06:17 GMT -5 Kramster said:

Apr 21, 2012 8:33:56 GMT -5 prodigalone said:

When my mom had a massive stroke in front of me at age 5 at home alone with her. Just me, her, and the dog.

Wow...quite an experience.

She told me she was dizzy. Then she collapsed. Then the dog started barking. I went over to her to see what was wrong - no response. For some reason, I knew to call my aunt. I had her phone number memorized. I said something to the effect of "My mommy is on the floor". She told me I should go to the neighbor's house right away. It was the middle of winter, and I had a child size robe and slippers I put on and walked out in the snow to their front door and rang the bell. The husband of the woman that lived there answered the door and when I told him my mom was on the floor he ran inside my house at top speed.

I ran back in and I don't really remember what happened next - only that in a few minutes the ambulance arrived and she was still unconscious. They propped her up in a sitting position (I forget why) but she was vomiting while unconscious. I distinctly remember going to the kitchen for bowls to catch the vomit.

Then they whisked her away. She was in a coma for two weeks and emerged completely paralyzed and unable to walk or talk. I didn't see her for a month - I lived at my aunt's house after the incident. The doctors told us she would probably not walk again.

After my mom emerged from the coma and after months of therapy she proved them wrong. She re-learned her speech and walking but she still had a paralyzed right arm, which remains to this day, along with a little bit of brain damage that affects her quickness of thought. When she was discharged from the hospital we lived with my aunt for over 6 months to recuperate.

I also remember the moment we both came back home together. It was strange going back there, just the two of us. (My dad was an absentee father, so he was never in the picture.) I eventually learned that the reason she had had the stroke was because she had lost too much blood after experiencing a very abnormally heavy period. I don't know how common that is, but it seems strange to me to this day.

After that nothing was ever really the same....

[mccoyblues]

The one event that changed my life was finding my older brother David in his bed, laying in a pool of his own blood, blood coming out of his nose. still and silent. I couldn't wake him and wasn't sure why. I went to tell mom & dad that something was wrong, David wasn't waking up for dinner.

I was 10, he was 14.

Later we figured out that he was cleaning his 22 rifle, the gun discharged and a bullet went through his right temple and stopped just before exiting the left side. He survived but was in a coma for 16 weeks and spend many months in rehab learning how to walk, talk and learn all over again.

That was 44 years ago and David and I get to spend every Saturday together, sharing the kinds of thing that brothers share. Our love for a good movie, good music, good BBQ, fast cars and worthless trivia. If you met David today, you would have no indication of his past struggles. He's my big brother and my inspiration. Life has been a different journey for all of us.

[Doug]

I turned down a National Merit Scholarship to join the Marines.

I was standing next to a friend when he was hit by a direct mortar round, picked myself up to strangely find no injuries, then I picked him up and put him in a gas mask bag.

Came home from school and found my 2nd wife and all the furniture etc. gone.

Some others but those stand out.

But maybe it's like Jeff said and little choices earlier precipitated the later things.

[Marshall]

Apr 21, 2012 7:35:08 GMT -5 millring said:

Seeing Fingerplucked naked changed me forever.

BLECCHHHH ! What a way to ruin a good breakfast.

[Russell Letson]

One spring morning in 1964, I decided that what I wanted to do was teach college English. (I was apparently the last to know.)

21 years later, in a meeting with the dean about the drop rate in my composition class, I corrected his use of "very unique." That was the effective end of my teaching career.

But both of those are trivial next to giving one of my classmates a ride to her home in Pittsburgh for the 1967 Christmas break. We got married in 1970.

[Deleted]

I can still remember seeing Debbie sitting in the grass wearing a summer dress when we were 16. She wouldn't go out with me then but that's OK we've been married now 33 years.

Also when I was 16 there a bunch of new hires out in the parking lot of the not yet open brand new McDonalds. We were inspecting the garbage dumpster. The manager singled me out and told me to get my hands out of my pockets. Decided in that moment that working for someone else was not a long term plan. Thank you, Mr Zoeller.

Standing on top of Chief Mtn in Montana after climbing my first mountain.

And all those chance meetings with great people that turned out to be friends.

[Village Idiot]

Some amazing stories here. Wow.

For me, two things: Landing in Africa, and leaving Africa. I was a kid, but I've looked at the world through a different lens ever since.

[Tamarack]

Too many to count. Probably the most significant was leaving grad school with an unfinished master's thesis and mioving into a first-floor apartment in an old carriage house in the Heritage Hill neighborhood in Grand Rapids. Six months later a tall beautiful young woman moved into the upstairs apartment. We weren't initially impressed with each other -- I thought she was standoffish and she thought I was weird (banjo playing didn't help in this regard). Six months after that we decided we could get along, even though she was a city woman and I was a self-styled mountain man. We have been married for 28 years.

Other moments were job changes and moves between states. Years after a move to St. Louis we became involved in an international adoption group and made some contacts and ended up adopting Zack in Peru. Then we moved to the Detroit area, not our favorite place to live, but we made similar contacts and adopted Ana in Guatemala. Different job choices would have resulted in different kids.