Well, among everything else, I was totally gobsmacked, so some of it was just standing there in shock.
Another really major moment in my life was the day I realized I was stronger than my father. I never again had to fear him hitting me. He made a move on me, and I picked him up and held him over my head.
And, instead of smashing him down to the ground…I let him down gently
It was actually wonderful: from that point onward, we were friends!
I don’t know that I horribly changed directions but the death of my Dad was THE defining moment in my life. Of parents and in-laws he was always my go-to and strength and as far as anyone knew the healthiest. And then he went and died first leaving us to deal with everything after on our own. We made it easily by following the example he set and the lessons he taught us and the world went on. But I will miss having him handy to the day I die.
It was Saturday, December 11th, 2010, at approximately 8:30 a.m. My wife was off running a race. I was making a cup of coffee in the kitchen. My 16 year-old son was getting ready to go to his internship. He didn’t feel well. He had a headache. Then he was throwing up. Then he was confused. Then he was unconscious. Then he was seizing. Then I was calling 911, overwhelmed with panic and horror, begging the ambulance drivers to come as fast as they could – no, faster!
My son had a massive stroke. He was in the hospital, in a coma, for weeks. In therapy for months. My wife and I were united as never before in this huge, unexpected, and terrifying new all-consuming project we had thrust upon us: rebuilding our son from scratch. We almost immediately decided to get divorced. Neither of us had been happy for some time. Life is too short, too unpredictable, to spend time being unhappy with the things you can change. It took this horrifically awful event to bring it to a head.
My son is doing OK, learning to deal with his disabilities. Almost finished with his bachelor’s degree. And I’m happily married to a woman I love a little bit more every day. In fact, we’re going on our (somewhat delayed) honeymoon tomorrow. I’m wrapping up my last hour of work as I type this. Bon voyage!
I don’t know if it defined me, but there is one moment I will never forget.
We used to hang out at a local coffee shop. Great place, almost like a communal living room. We always had music going in some form, ranging from open mic and karaoke to full on drag shows.
I used to sing along to stuff but I flat badly without some sort of monitor so most people just thought I sucked at singing. Put a mic in my hand and it’s a different story. If I can hear myself, I can correct.
Anyway, a couple of friends and I had been going to karaoke at a different place. I knew I could do it, so one night I finally got up at the coffee shop karaoke night. The owner’s adult daughter kind of gave me a look. Then she saw what was on the screen, “Crazy” by Patsy Cline. She said “oh sweetie…” and thats as far as she got. I nailed it, just smacked it out of the park. She literally had her mouth hanging open. It was priceless, the kind of thing you see in movies.
Since then, I do open mics with my guitar and karaoke every weekend. I love it. Sometimes I suck, sometimes I do just fine, but I have the confidence of knowing that there is something I can do well. Usually. 
I can think of three moments when I was on an intense natural high but none really made me change course.
1 - Is the most trivial. I remember a girl I met while on holiday in Greece. For reasons that would be too lengthy to list, we couldn’t use our rooms for our sweaty shenanigans. So we found a deserted spot on the beach at night and went back there night after night to get intimate. What with the moon, the slight breeze and the sea just meters away it was a gorgeous location. Add to the the fact that said girl was also gorgeous plus the thrill of perhaps getting caught and it all adds up to some of the best sex I’ve ever had.
2 - Another girl I used to care about very, very much. We were just friends although I was definitely hoping that it would lead to something else. To cut a long story short, this led to a stupid falling out and we stopped talking to each other completely. She was leaving the country a few months later, so I thought I’d never see her again. She was out of my life, full stop.
A year later, I was at a nightclub where I was regular and stumbled face to face with her. It first, no word would come out of my mouth, then I mumbled some sarcastic remark and walked away. I took only a couple of steps and froze. That was silly. I turned back, she was still there looking at me. We reconnected immediately. It turns out that she was in the country for the weekend and knew where I was likely to be that night (I had told her of that particular nightclub but she had never been there herself). So, she actually went out of her way to a place she wasn’t familiar with on the off chance of finding me. That blew my mind. I spent the rest of the night dancing like a madman.
3 - I was asked to replace a teacher at very short notice a couple of years ago. While it was a subject that I knew very well, I hadn’t taught it in about 12 years, the students were already upper intermediate-advanced learners and I had less than a week to prepare. I totally nailed it. So much so that, when I saw some students months later, they were still very enthusiastic about the course. I was asked to take more classes the following year and it all went very well again and again, I had former students giving me very positive feeback as late as last month. It definitely feels good 
.
@ Trinopus, that was a great story ! I can really relate to that : being in a difficult time in your life and witnessing something unexpected and funny that makes you smile. As you said, life still has surprises in store for us.
I’ve shared this on the SDMB previously: my GPA was well below the requirements to get an interview with HP. My college years were a growing up time ;). And the newly-christened Silicon Valley was going through a hiring freeze - no one was coming to campus except HP.
So I went to the intro session the night before and approached the senior exec there. I basically said “look you are going to hire me once we get past this pesky GPA issue” and he laughed but spoke with me. By the end of that few minutes, I got one of the wild card slots they had and got the job. The first brick in my career path so noteworthy to me.
The birth of my first child … becoming a parent completely changed my life (for the good too) …
There is one moment…one decision I made, an A or B choice…that led me directly to where I am now.
I was in college and I was hanging out with one of my best friends, Mark, after classes one day. We had gone to the driving range, then had lunch and were hanging back at his apartment. I had a first date with another guy that evening. Mark knew about it as we always talked about stuff like that. I was getting ready for my date and talking to Mark and said something like, I wished the date was another night because we were having fun and I didn’t really feel like going on this date. The guy was nice, but I didn’t know how much we would click, etc. I was headed out the door and Mark looked at me and said, “You could just not go…you could, you know, stay.” And in that moment, I thought, I really could…just stay. I hadn’t considered Mark as more than a best friend until that moment. Clearly he had, and I didn’t know it. If he had said something earlier in the day, I might have called the guy and made an excuse to cancel or postpone. Since I was meeting him somewhere and this was in the days before cell phones, my only option at the point would be to basically stand him up. That was not something I could do. I told Mark, “I can’t just not show,” and he said, “I know.” I think we both felt pretty miserable at the moment.
And so I went on my date, and the guy was nice. We dated a couple of months, but there really wasn’t anything between us. However, one of the people in his circle of friends turned out to be Suburban Plankton. We started dating that next semester (Spring 1991) and have been together ever since. I still sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had stayed with Mark that night, but I wouldn’t change my answer to find out.
June 2002, I had given up my job and apartment, packed the rental truck with all my stuff and was about to hit the road to a new state 7 hours away to live with my girlfriend of 5 years who was already there. I called her up that morning to say I’ll see you in the evening. She says, and I remember the exact words to this day:
“I don’t think you should come.”
Turns out she had met someone else.
Kick in the balls, all the energy left me, I was essentially speechless. So turn tail, unpack the truck into a storage unit and go stay with my parents for a month. Now 15 years later, I run my own successful company, but I’ve never been able to put my heart out there again.
Oh, sorry, I missed that about looking for a good change.
When my husband died, I was 40 years old and while intelligent and competent in many ways, I had never been in full, sole, charge of myself (and 2 teenaged boys) and I had serious doubts that I was up to the task.
But I was. I righted the ship and kept it moving forward. I got my boys educated and they turned out very well. I moved forward in my career, no longer having to balance job opportunities based on whether or not they would conflict with my husband’s career plans. And I have made a rich and fulfilling life for myself as a single empty-nester.
My husband was my soul mate and I was absolutely devastated when he died, but had he not passed away, I might never have discovered what an amazing person I could be when left to my own devices.
Same for me.
April 1990, I was 15. We received the list of courses that we could take the following year. It was a very important decision because the choice we made then couldn’t be changed past the first weeks of September and we had to stick to it for the last two years of secondary school.
I had been a science geek since I was ten. I had considered studying astronomy for years but at that time, I was more and more into chemistry. I was a good student in all fields but science was my true love. So, I picked the programme that offered lots of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. And I did fine. Except in Physics.
The Physics teacher was petty, dictatorial little asshole who lacked the most basic pedagogical skills. He had an uncanny ability to make the most exciting subjects not just boring, but absolutely repellent. And did I mention that he was a petty, dictatorial little asshole ? It was two miserable years for me, I grew utterly disgusted with Physics and started looking for other things to study at University.
I settled on Humanities but that meant I had to go to a completely different University than the one I had always planned to, one that was significantly further away from my hometown. I stayed there after I graduated, got my first job, got married, had my wonderful daughters.
The past 25 years of my life would have been very different if I had ticked another box on that form in April 1990…
I grew up in the 1970s before Aspergers was well known or understood. My life in public school was a nightmare. All these people doing inexplicable things for inexplicable reasons. I tried to just keep my head down and be inconspicuous. Unfortunately kids see such behavior as an invitation for abuse. The more I tried to disappear the more I stood out.
I sucked at school and it didn’t help that both parents were educators in the district. I was pushed through school, never really trying, and probably getting failing grades by most standards. I hated the environment, the assignments and especially the other kids who never let me forget I was the odd one.
Finally in high school someone decided I needed special education. So I started a series of evaluations to see where I needed help. One of the things they put me through was an IQ test. I don’t want to start a debate on the utility of such tests, but just let me say that I tested well into the 99th percentile.
I’m not sure what exactly that did for me but finding this out just sort of flipped a switch somewhere in my head and I said “f**k it all!” From that day on I stopped looking for external validation in any form. Within a year I had a very solid internal set of values that I held myself to and stopped paying any attention to anyone else’s opinion of me.
I graduated high school with a low C average and only made it into college on a special program for people with poor GPA’s. I essentially had to perform to a certain level or be out on my ear.
In college my decision to not worry about the opinions of other served me very well because this extended even to my professors. If I didn’t like an assignment I took as liberal as possible interpretation of the requirements and did something I was truly interested in instead of the drivel that was assigned. Apparently professors like this kind of behavior because I continually got top marks for my work.
I now have a Masters degree and am well employed in my chosen field.
I still look back on that epiphany in high school as a seminal event in my life. And I still remember actually making the decision to stop worrying about the opinions of others.