What changed your life forever .

Vietnam..led to the realization :
If the situation I find myself in is not going to result in someone dieing, then it isn't all that important.

I was married really young at 21 because I found my soulmate. 22 years later she is still with me. That's more than half my life.
Then the day my son was to be born I was a K Mart mechanic making 150 dollars a week 2 people had called in sick so it was just Joe and I and we were swamped. The call came in and like a trooper Joe told me he would be more mad if I didn't go. So I left him all alone. When I came to the hospital it took a while to scrub down all the grease on my hands face hair then when I saw my wife my son took his first breath 5 minutes later. That was my life changing event. The day I became a father. It made all my struggles that I chose to have made because I didn't listen to my parents about more education I really didn't want them spending any more money on me I know now that is their reason for living I'm living that now too worth while.
Fast forward to my life now. Son is gonna be 21 this year. He still does not know his direction in life but the one certainty is that I will be behind him. Daughter is going to the Navy this year. She's very smart takes all AP classes in HS straight A's likes what the military will offer her. Just make it thru boot camp I keep telling myself. I want to move close by it's killing me man it's killing me. All dads out there start that college fund NOW TODAY there is no TOMORROW.
I lose my job of 15 years but I kept my host home. So to combat my depression I took on this hobby. So Motorized bikes is yet another life changing event.
And I don't need no depression pills. My rides to nowhere beats all.

leftywoody said:

When I was 17 in 1969 I worked at a gas station on the Indiana Toll Road . In the middle of nowhere and cornfields . My knowledge of the real world revolved around farming and small towns . A bankrobber made his gettaway ,cops on his tail , from Elkhart to our small plaza and took a patron hostage . An Indiana State Police Sharpshooter ended the escape with a well placed shot through the back window of the car . The hostage was rescued . In the 30 minutes this took to play out , I realised my little world was a whole lot bigger than I thought . You all have had life changing moments when you were very young that you never forget . Can you share one ?

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Wow.

I was 17 years old. Living pretty crazy and wild on the streets. One day we were hanging out in the front yard with my bro and some friends. Some (bit older 25 yo or so) guy from down the road, was riding a Yamaha 400 up and down our street - really FAST. Drunk as a skunk, high as a kite on whatever. Lost it on our driveway entrance, flew through the air sideways chest forward, chest hit a 10 inch diameter tree. He gurgled a bit and he died right there - maybe 12 feet from where we were standing. I decided to make something of my life at that point.

I prefer to use the word "shaped".
Many things have shaped my life in much different ways...
My kids are shaping my life; I want them to have a better life than I did & not have to live through what I have.
Another thing that shaped my life was seeing so many of my homeboys killed in gang wars, or from drugs & prison.
The fact is... that I almost died many times too, but I was very lucky.
I still live in the same neighborhood where I grew up... & I still have to be careful walking down the street! I also don't want those things to happen to my kids someday.

I would say the day we flew out of Danang, Viet Nam and lit on the Aircraft Carrier in the middle of the Tonkin Gulf. Wow, did that ever open up my eyes to the small world I had been living in, in central Iowa. Several things in that next year changed me forever.

Let's see....
Telling my best friend I couldn't go out partying with him and missing the death ride he took late that night? (18 year old)

Watching a man die while I held his hand and he took his last breath? (28 years old)

Having a drunk driver hit me head on and not having a heartbeat for 3-4 minutes and being pronounced dead at the scene? (35 years old)

Getting "saved" and becoming a Christian a few years later? (39 years old)

Helping my mother die the way she wanted to? (43 years old)

All those have changed me.

I'm 47 years old now, and can't wait for the "next one".

Hey, waking up every day changes my life forever now.

When I was 5 years old, I was playing in the mud with my little brother Charles, as we always played. Up to that point, life was perfect. I was secure, happy, and care free. We were just playing and in a blink of an eye the world changed. The realization that I and everyone I know will die someday hit me. I could not see why I was born to just die. and the thought of everyone I loved was going to die made me so sad, I ran to the house to ask my mother why did this have to be and she told me to not think of it and we all will be around a long long time. But from that point on, I never was the same, and had that other person living in the inside of me. I could be falling down drunk and he was always sober. I would do wrong and he would let me know the truth about myself.

Four years ago I woke up in the middle of the night, sat up in bed and realized how much time in my life Ive wasted and cant get back. I decided that night as i sat there in my bed thinking that from that night forward I would drive and push myself to get where i wanna be, and never go back to the person I was. The past is the past and im living for the future. Billy

my very latest life change is when I had my first brain surgery in 1980. I had known for years something was wrong and finally the first mri found it. That operation was able to take 90% of the mass out but left the core in because it was too close to my brain stem.

The point was that I was over forty years old and realized for the first time that I WAS NOT going to die young. First I cursed then realized that It was time to start a real grownup person's life. I met my wife Becky shortly there after and the new world began.

deacon said:

my very latest life change is when I had my first brain surgery in 1980. I had known for years something was wrong and finally the first mri found it. That operation was able to take 90% of the mass out but left the core in because it was too close to my brain stem.

The point was that I was over forty years old and realized for the first time that I WAS NOT going to die young. First I cursed then realized that It was time to start a real grownup person's life. I met my wife Becky shortly there after and the new world began.

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How true thaking charge of your life is a choice, and being a man is not throwing away all the fun things in life but stop being childish, thin skined, or have tempor tantrums. It is being the man or woman God meant for you to be, and accepting that is who you are and let the childish ways go. Your right on Deacon.

Several events: My father dying of cancer when I was four. My mother remarrying, to a speed addicted child molester.
My buddies being brutally raped and murdered at the fishing hole, I was gonna go with that day but my Mom reminded me it was dangerous at "the rockpits" in Ft. Lauderdale.
Being shot at, at nearly point blank range (.357) and missed at 18, being shot at and hit, leaving me slightly crippled at 21.
Shooting an attacker at 30, and being beaten like Rodney King by the cops that I called.
I'm not really an "Angry Old Fart", that's just for fun. At 51 I have realized that some of the "important" things don't mean squat, some of the" little" things deserve my undivided attention.

Weedylot said:

I have realized that some of the "important" things don't mean squat, some of the" little" things deserve my undivided attention.

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Very interesting observation. Too bad that at the time we don't really know which ones are which. Its only on retrospection that we can see it. Best I can do is try to live through it all.

Nothing like seeing people die to make you appreciate life.

I've seen my share of people dying. An auto accident right in front of me, one guy was nearly grotesquely decapitated, the other lived a few minutes. A friend died of an OD, another of alcoholism, another by suicide. All in my presence or minutes before I arrived.
Yes Deacon, every day I'm learning the important from the unimportant.
BTW: Veterans aren't the only ones that struggle with PTSD.

My mentor in life and I worked on a schooner in Mystic CT. The season had ended. Capt. Foss was going to Fla. to go to school and upgrade his license. He asked me along for the ride and so I could find a boat to work. I walked the docks looking for one and a job. One going down to the islands, hired me. It was a big deal. I had been out of site of land only once and that was sailing off RI from CT. The next day with sea bag in hand I go to meet the yacht that hired me. For the life of me, I could not find it. The docks went on for miles and were a labyrinth.

Dejected, I start walking the docks again. I ask a man on a tugboat if they are looking for help. He said no but to check in the office as they have other boats. Next day I get called in for an interview. A woman (one of the biggest, ugliest and meanist woman I have ever seen) and a small man more feminine and unpleasant then she do the interview. He had threw out my application because I missed a box. They had a guy call out sick the day before a super tanker was to sail. The job was "Utilityman" (cabin boy) Clean the heads, make the officer's beds, scrub decks etc. This was the early 80s and it paid $140 a day and I had no bills.

The next day I was on board bound for the USSR (where a bunch of hookers drank me under the table) and bounced around Europe.

Ended up sailing for 16 years. Glad I did it, wouldn't want to again. Except for next time.....

Weedylot said:

I Veterans aren't the only ones that struggle with PTSD.

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I personally never had it, but I knew people who did. I had the I don't give a flying .... when i got home. Man tells me I screwed up, I asked, "Did anyone die?" If he said no, I just shrugged and walked away. You can't build a life on that way of thinking, but it worked to keep me sane for a while. I was also a cop and an insurance investigator during that period of time. I have great respect for life in spite of how that sounds.

Well lets see,... the really life changing or altering events in that I was one way, living life a certain way then after the event I'm completely different (and in someways ever changing)... to become a follower of Jesus Christ at 21, married (21 years now) at 23, first child at 26 and second child at 35. Those I look back on as milestones. Something happened at each point effectively making me a different person in each of those cases.

Developing type 1 diabetes at the age of 36

Getting married at 37.

Holding my fathers hand in the hospital in 2001 and feeling his last heart beat.