YOUR Defining Moment(s) in your life

[Chiliagon]

ok, I was having a conversation with a friend about stuff and I said this term "this time period defines who I am today"

so I was like "hey, that's a good topic"

so I ask you, if you care to share..


what time period in your life, defines who you are today?

it can be a year, a month.. a period of years.. etc.


this is pretty easy for me.

My last 3-6 years of School clearly define me. it is what made me as I am today, why I am the way I am.

(this might answer some questions some have about me.)

as you may know, I live in a City that isn't exactly big. only 24,500 strong.

my school when I attended was only just over 400 students.

pretty small when you compare to a lot of city schools that have like 800, 1000+ or even 2,000 students attending.

heck my Graduating class was only 81 students. I knew pretty much everyone in my Gr. 12 class.

I was known as being an "independant" to most of my classmates. I was not part of a group, not a jock, not a nerd.. not a popular kid, not any of them.

I was a group of 1!

I never got involved with the smoking craze when suddenly a good 30% of your class began to smoke because of peer pressure.

i didn't go to school parties, (mainly cause I didn't get invited)

I didn't have a GF at all, but I did have some female friends that I talked to. I was focused entirely on what I hoped would be my ticket to my life.. I played Football. I studied it, believed it, played it. I really had little time for much else.

plus I was an outspoken individual. I didn't care what other people thought about what I said during classes. (some of this I regret) I stood up for what I believed in, despite what others tried to do or say. I never got caught up in the age where if the cool kid or the popular kid is doing it, I guess I have to as well!!

But I also got harassed a lot, bullied, teased. it never got to physical where they tried to beat me up because they knew I could defend myself and they didn't want to strike a match under me. They saw first hand what happened if you started a fight with me. so they stayed away from that. But they verbally tried to get under my skin often.

this was in the day before schools really took a stand against bullying and said no more! I had to take care of it myself and deal with it. so I either went to the Principal and complained (which for the most part, proved useless) or I took revenge.

I believe that they couldn't stand the fact that no matter what they did, they couldn't break my spirit! I never gave up and ran away or asked/begged them to stop.


this entire time throughout school, made me how I am today.

if I could go back to school, and re-do the last 3-6 years, I would have stood up to them instead of taking the abuse. I would have confronted each of them right away and made them either put up or shut up, but I didn't. I think it was because I believe if I had, I'd have gotten the punishment from the school, not them.

 

[mayety]

June 7, 1969, 2:00 am, a sudden car crash in a car speeding at 120 mph. I was a passenger and frightened to death..... then the driver dropped off the pavement at the median, overcorrected and went across the other northbound lanes, overcorrected again and went back over the same lanes, hit into the median and the car flipped 3 times in a 975' rollover. My back was broken and I was paralyzed. He had the steering wheel to hang onto..no damage.

March 27, 2009 going along the sidewalk in my wheelchair, a car backed out a driveway, knocked me over, my left femur was broken and 18 months later I am still recuperating after 3 surgeries!

Do you think G-d is out to get me

Will His 3rd time be lucky?

 

[Kreskin]

June 7, 1969, 2:00 am, a sudden car crash in a car speeding at 120 mph. I was a passenger and frightened to death..... then the driver dropped off the pavement at the median, overcorrected and went across the other northbound lanes, overcorrected again and went back over the same lanes, hit into the median and the car flipped 3 times in a 975' rollover. My back was broken and I was paralyzed. He had the steering wheel to hang onto..no damage.

March 27, 2009 going along the sidewalk in my wheelchair, a car backed out a driveway, knocked me over, my left femur was broken and 18 months later I am still recuperating after 3 surgeries!

Do you think G-d is out to get me

Will His 3rd time be lucky?

My heart goes out to you. Those are definitely life altering events.

 

[Cannuck]

Two moments for me.

The first was when I was nineteen and we were pissing around at the lake. I almost drowned. The things I actually thought about, when I finally gave up the fight, were not the things I thought were important at the time. It turned my life around.

The second moment was ten years ago when, as a firefighter, I responded to the suicide attempt of a friend and co-worker. He eventually died.

 

[YukonJack]

In my youth, when I was working in the mines, (I feel a close kinship to the miners in Chile), life consisted of working, sleeping, bowling and DRINKING.

One one of our weekend trips From Manitouwadge to Toronto, I drove from about Wava to Sault Ste. Marie without the slightest recollection, except that I vaguely recall a moose or some other animal with antler, on the highway, which I managed to avoid hitting, somehow. Turning east-bound, the rising sun "woke" me up.

How I survived that treacherous, up and dowh, curving spread of highway, I don't know till this day, but I suspect a guardian angel must have looked after me.

That was a defining moment in my life. Since then, while I still enjoy my booze, I NEVER combine it with driving.

 

[Curiosity]

I have learned over the years we educate ourselves through adversity in life's ugly and strange moments.

The foregoing seems to back me up - it is the unthinkable we learn to overcome and face what life delivers.

Each of your stories is worth a book - sharing it was generous of you - curio

 

[Chiliagon]

wow. reading these comments really has made me believe that my story really isn't that big of a deal.

 

[Cliffy]

I have had two major defining times, one was a ten day aboriginal Ecumenical Conference in 1978 at Morley Alberta where 4000 people, mostly spiritual elders, gathered. The other was when I was hit by a logging truck doing 90 km and hour while on my snowmobile in 1980. Both changed my life forever.