I’ve had a really shitty week, so let’s have a positive thread, and think about all the things we have going for us. The topic for this thread is “Name the best thing that has ever happened to you.”
I’ll start, and since I don’t want this whole thread to be answers like “my wife” or “my husband” or “my parents,” I won’t say the best thing that ever happened to me was being born a straight white male into an educated middle class family in the United States. Not that there is wrong being any other race/sexual orientation, etc., just that being born a straight white male in our society gave me some really unarguable advantages to the extent I’m of the opinion that if you were born in the circumstances I was born in, and find your life to be a mess, you should probably look in the mirror for your biggest problem (and yes, there are always exceptions).
SO I will rule that out, and that leaves me with the Army and Lily. Going to the Army and getting yelled at and whipped into shape, then going around the world and seeing places I might never have seen, meeting a bunch of people who were different from what I was used to in WV, and then being able to use my military benefits to pay for my education was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Until Lily came along. Yes, I love Tunch to death, and I will grudgingly admit to loving Rosie when prodded, but Lily is the greatest dog in the world and loves me to pieces. When Tunch comes into the office, he wants food or water or a brief skritch behind the ears. When Rosie comes into the office, she wants food, or to go for a walk, or a ball. When Lily comes into the office, puts her front paws on my legs, and looks at me, all she wants me to do is push the seat back a little bit so she can sit on my lap while I work.
I don’t care what you say about dogs being con artists. Lily loves me.
MattR
Josh McDaniels got fired so this week was a net positive for me. But like with you John, finding Ellie was clearly the best thing that ever happened to me.
jeff
Getting a giant fellowship and getting to attend grad school free, which also allowed me to “see the world”.
Campionrules
White, Male Privilege!!!!
sorry…I’m always tempted to yell that out randomly.
FlipYrWhig
Having an English teacher in high school who liked the way I wrote totally changed the course of my life.
WyldPirate
That’s a mighty broad brush you’re slinging paint around with.
ETA: Best thing that ever happened to me was having the wake up call of having a heart attack, surviving, slowing my life down and appreciating that our time here is very, very limited.
mai naem
That is an awfully sweeeet comment about Lily. And even if she is a con artist, hey, she puts on one heck of a show of showing some lurrrvvv.
PaminBB
That’s sweet.
As to the topic, I’ll spin off Doug J’s post just below. I’m not sure if I can say that this is the best thing that ever happened to me, since 10+ years of training didn’t just happen, but becoming a scientist has been a very satisfying part of my life for the last three+ decades.
Bud
Seriously, it was discovering that I was gay. At the time, back in 1976 in sixth grade when I suddenly realized what my feelings really meant, I was in a state of shock and disbelief.
But over the years, I’ve learned to count the joys of my sexuality. I won’t go into them here, but more than once I’ve closed my eyes and thought, “Thank God I’m gay.”
John Cole
@WyldPirate: I’ve edited it for the concern trolls.
mr. whipple
If you had a wife, you wouldn’t dismiss that choice in favor of a dog or joining the army. Especially if she was reading over your shoulder. Heh.
So, despite your admonition, I’m going with wife(#2) because she’s fucking awesome.
However, what made wife #2 possible was going thru a short round with a psychologist during the breakup of marriage #1. That was by far the best thing I could have ever done for myself.
soonergrunt
Easy. The births of my children. Fatherhood made me a better husband, a better soldier, and a better man.
General Stuck
When I stopped worrying, and learned to love the bomb.
Benjamin Cisco
Well, since you whacked all the default categories, I’ll go with seeing Nichelle Nicols on Star Trek as a kid. Sparked my love of all things futuristic in general and space/electronics/computers specifically.
__
Not that I was thinking of any of that when I saw her, mind you…
donnah
Well, I’ve been an artist all of my life and have never been able to make it big. But for a brief time I was designing decorative stencils and had my own business. During that time, my designs were seen at an international quilt market and I was approached by the owner of a fabric company in Portland, Ore. She liked my work and asked if I would be interested in designing fabric for her as a freelancer.
I was stunned. It lasted only for about seven years, but I got to design many different pattern groups and one of my designs was nominated and won a prestigious award for the garment they used the fabric for. I only got a tiny percentage of the sales, but it was still pretty good money and I had the thrill (as did my mom) of seeing my fabric on bolts in stores.
Pretty cool.
cleek
my wife
guster
I got a high six-figure deal for a novel. The book totally tanked, but that money was probably the best non-wife, non-kid thing that every happened to me. Although if John can say ‘my dog,’ I dunno why ‘my wife’ isn’t a good answer.
Because without question, my wife. We’ve been together for almost 25 years, and she eclipses every other good thing that ever happened to me.
kdaug
Balloon Juice comment sections!
Only partly kidding. More broadly, the Internet, and the ability to engage with like-minded people from around the world I never would have met otherwise.
The fact that a bit of technology allows me to sharpen and refine (and occasionally change) my thinking is amazing to me.
(The ability to work from home ain’t too shabby, either).
Apsalar
Oddly enough, I’m going to say the best thing that ever happened to me was the manipulative jerk I dated in high school. Like most teenage girls I had pretty low self-esteem, so when a guy, any guy, actually asked me out, even though he wasn’t exactly in the social circles I would have preferred, I said yes. Then I kept dating him even after I realized we weren’t very compatible, because, well, any boyfriend is better than no boyfriend, right?
Anyway, this turned out to be a good thing because the guy was a computer geek, and while I was for sure a geek, I didn’t know anything about computers before him, and he wanted me to learn how to use email, and IRC, and even a little bit of Linux. And it turned out that I was pretty good at it, better than him, in fact, which became a sore subject after a while. But I ended up majoring in computer science in college, and getting good jobs, which is better than the alternative. I see people I went to college with who majored in Japanese literature or violin performance and they have trouble getting a job in a bad economy. Hoocoodanode. It also led me to me meeting my husband, so all in all, a good thing. If I could go back and talk to my 16 year old self, I’d probably warn her off manipulative jerks, but my life would have turned out quite differently, I think.
Jarem
I had a teacher in undergrad who refused to let me drop her class, and instead berated me for three hours about my work ethic and my entitlement.
I sent her a thank you note when I got into graduate school. Felt it was the least I could do.
Cromagnon
Being a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division!
Until you’ve stepped out the door of an aircraft in flight at 800ft AGL, in pitch-black night, wearing 75 lbs of equipment and 40 lbs of parachute, you haven’t lived (note, paraphrased rippoff of a famous paratrooper saying)
Paris
I found some vacant land real cheap almost 30 years ago. I’ve lived on it for the last 20 years. I love every day I wake up to the birds and frogs. It can stop snowing now though – I think we received our quota for the winter in the last week, and we often worry whether it will be a white or a green Christmas.
xephyr
Growing up with my two parents, 4 brothers, and 2 sisters taught me a LOT about what matters. Somehow I acquired a pretty good BS detector along the way, and more importantly, an awareness of what an amazing planet this is… maybe one day we’ll be smart enough to stop fucking it up. Fact is, I’ve been blessed – and wouldn’t trade all the gold in Fort Knox for the simple ability to differentiate right from wrong – and pearls from swine.
MobiusKlein
Not being killed by gangsters who were coming home from a funeral for their boss who got knifed in jail.
Cops were less than a block away when the gang decided to attack me.
Hmm, that might count as an anti-thing, worst thing that almost happened, but didn’t. Different thread?
chopper
honestly, i’ve been conditioned to think of my family and basic situation first and foremost.
can tell you specifics about the worst things that ever happened to me tho.
Bnut
Clonazepam.
General Stuck
@Cromagnon:
anuther old paratrooper saying. “they are all night jumps”
WereBear
Word processing.
I was just starting my writing career for reals when word processing came along, and it has been an incredible ride because of it.
Bit of geek heaven.
Mnemosyne
Honestly, I would have to say that it was my shrink convincing me 10 years ago that my depression really was severe enough to need medication and wasn’t just a passing sulk that I needed to get over. Between that and therapy, I’m in a much better position personally and professionally than I could have imagined.
(The professional still kinda sucks since I’m stuck in the pink-collar ghetto, but at least I can pay my rent and my car insurance and still have money for hobbies.)
WyldPirate
@John Cole:
Hey I didn’t mind. I was just making an observation and thinking that it was sort of out of character for you to paint with such a broad brush.
I don’t disagree in general, but bad things happen to all sorts of people irrespective of color, religion, sex, etc. through no fault of their own.
Me, I’m more prone to fly off the handle and not be as careful with my writing.
LeeM
I have to agree on the military. After floundering around for 2 years at college I joined the Coast Guard. The most moving speech I ever heard was in boot camp, where our company commander relived his experience in barely saving a fishing vessel from sinking. The finale was the CG motto, “You have to go out, but you don’t have to come back.” Five years and a bunch of hairy missions later, college was much easier.
HansSolo
Hmm, I can think of a few things:
1) My dogs (they rock)
2) My divorce (Freedom!)
3) Being handed a copy of William Goldman’s “The Princess Bride” when I was young. (It hooked my on reading.)
4) The internets (especially the one I’m on now)
5) Shooting Greedo (I DID shoot first. He deserved it.)
Not necessarily in that order though.
Politically Lost
I just took part in my first jury trial as an attorney this week. We were utterly and completely slaughtered. It was so horrible from the first moments of the trial, I didn’t think it could get worse. It did in fact get worse. It was the most excruciating experience I’ve ever witnessed except where I wasn’t personally being given life saving trauma care.
However, there was a long in coming epiphany during the trial (it hit just moments after the judge granted a non-suit to our opponents). I saw with such clarity all we had done wrong for the last two years in preparing for this trial, and that all of those things can be addressed and fixed.
Essentially, the best thing I have going for me right now is that I’ve learned what not to do. And, it was seared into my very brain tissue.
Kitty
Being an alcoholic and getting sober 15 years ago.
mistermix
Scotch Whiskey.
geg6
Yeah, those puppehs can really steal your heart.
I have three things that are the best things that ever happened to me, not including my parents and sisters.
1) When I came to work for PSU. It is the very first time in my life that I have felt my employer actually gave a damn about me, professionally and personally. I love my job, I love my co-workers, and I love PSU even though I’m a Panther through and through.
2) Meeting my John. Actually, re-meeting him. I had met him about 25 years ago and thought he was too arrogant for words. But re-meeting him again four years ago was the best thing ever. He is truly the man of my dreams and, if I had to wait until I was almost 50 years old to find him, it was worth it.
3) Totally related to #2 is Henry and Otis, since they are his dogs (though John says he thinks they have decided that they like me better than him, especially Otis). They really make my day, week, and month sometimes. The unconditional love and affection they give me are pure and unadulterated and, in this awful world we live in today, the only things that keep me sane sometimes.
Capri
Becoming a veterinarian.
I can’t imagine any other profession, it brings me into contact with lots of animals every day, interesting people, keeps my brain in tip top shape. There are a few bad apples, but overall veterinarians and veterinary technicians are wonderful to work with. I always look forward to coming to work.
Sasha
Having my girlfriend (and almost-fiancee) break up with me, kicking me out of the house I called home for over eight years.
She honestly did me quite the favor.
licensed to kill time
I’d have to say the best thing that ever happened to me was getting out of my hometown at a very young age and traveling the world. I saw other cultures, other ways of living, other values. and I never got stuck in the American exceptionalism or consumer culture mindset. It has colored my whole life and I urge every young person I meet to just get out there and travel.
Loneoak
I saw a dog yesterday that looked just like a brindle-coat Lily, maybe with a touch more Chihuahua. Very pretty.
EDIT: BTW, I do not mean this is the best thing that has ever happened to me. This just seemed like a good place to share this anecdote.
arguingwithsignposts
Haven’t read the whole thread yet, but I’m guessing Tunch is going to be pissed.
R-Jud
I really am amused by the fact that comments 32 and 33 came out in that particular order.
For me, it’s the Internet. It’s how I met my husband and am able to work from home and live far from my family without going insane.
dweomer
The best: the birth of my son and first child, Leonidas.
The worst: his death 15 days later.
Maude
@WyldPirate:
No, really?
You write what you think and stand up for your opinion. That is valuable.
So glad your heart and you are okay.
Martin
Hmm. Best long-arc thing was probably suffering through my parents divorce. Love both of them, but that really shakes you from seeing people how you want to see them into seeing them how they really are. I’ve looked at people and my place in the world very differently ever since them, and without that experience I don’t think most of the good stuff later (like my wife and my kids) would have come about as well as they have.
Best not bad-but-good thing? Dumping a chunk of our house downpayment money into Apple back in 1997 as a hail-mary investment and having the fortification to hold onto it. As Louis CK said about being white – “I’m not saying white people are better, but being white is clearly better!”. Same goes for having money. It may not buy you happiness, but it can stave off a lot of stress and misery if you’ve got it. I’m not rich (didn’t dump that much in) but I’m a lot less poor than I ought to be.
eemom
sweet post.
Dogs are actually the best thing to happen to humankind, imo. I just wish we deserved them.
As for me, I couldn’t possibly say anything other than my children. Dear little pains in the ass though they are at times.
And now, if you will excuse me, I gotta go see what I can do about getting this Gladys Knight & The Pips earworm out of my head.
Alex S.
At the age of 15, I was at a very boring birthday party for a distant relative. Out of boredom, I read a book that opened a whole new world for me. It was a biography of the Russian Czarina Catherine II. I consider this to be the spark that turned me into a more complete human being after I had been “stuck” since the divorce of my parents and the custody battle. I lived with my father, a coal miner, and there were almost no books in the household. But then, I started reading one book after another, turned into an intellectual, went out more, met great people and so on. There were other sparks as well, but this one carried me for about 7 years.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Books. I’d never have survived childhood without them; they’v led me into a thousand interesting places, and out of not a few dangerous ones; they’re my constant companions and comforters.
Other humans are sometimes OK, too.
R-Jud
@dweomer: Oh, Jesus. I am so sorry for your loss.
asiangrrlMN
My cats. Starting Taiji (tai chi) two-and-a-half years ago. My latest therapist. My writing. Being able to get lost in books. My kick-ass friends. That’s the short list.
@dweomer: Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss.
eemom
@Martin:
my dad always used to quote an old comedian — Joey Louis? — who said, “I been rich and I been poor. Believe me, rich is better.”
Jamie
well there are 2 things my wife and the brain surgery that saved my life 48 years ago.
Carrie
Effexor :-)
Tax Analyst
Isn’t that kind of a run-on “best thing that ever happened to me” statement? Or are you going to ponder these several and various occurences, rate them and lay your final “best thing” answer on us at an appointed time?
OH, the “best thing” that ever happened to me is that I’m still alive and fairly healthy for the most part. There might have been things in the past that were wonderful and that I’m fond of thinking about, but when you boil it all down you have to combine and mix all of them together. And the end result is “now”, and hopefully you will be able to view “now” as the “best thing”. Now if circumstances beyond your control make that impossible, well, advice is cheap, but I would try and determine if I had any active part in making those past “best” things happen and see if I can find something in me to make “now” or at least “tomorrow” better than today.
Yeah, I know, talk is cheap.
Jiminy-Fucking-Cricket signing out.
Hannah
The best thing that’s ever happened to me is being a liberal.
Cain
Cleek’s wife.
cain
General Stuck
But doctor, the inkblots,
they all look like vaginas
your hour is up
until next week
DougJ
A Hallmark post starring Melissa Gilbert and Craig T. Nelson…..
brendancalling
1980s hardcore music was one of the best things that ever happened to me. without that I wouldn’t be a bass player, a blogger, a musician, a left-winger, or the trash-talking punk i am today.
asiangrrlMN
FYWP, do not have permission to edit, my ass.
@Martin: Was just thinking about that Louis CK Time Machine bit. Funny stuff.
AliceBlue
Best thing? The day I learned to read and being raised in a home where books and music were appreciated. Actually I don’t remember learning to read–It seems like I was born knowing how. I grew up hearing classical music, marches, jazz, etc. on my parents’ stereo in the living room and demon rock and roll from the radio in my brother’s room.
Rosalita
The first best thing to happened to me was getting a job in SoCal when I was 20. I packed up my life in a small Toyota and drove out there after growing up on the east coast. I got to know another branch of my family, made a lifetime best friend and enjoyed some of the fun things LA has to offer before coming back east again.
Sorry John, but second best thing is finding my 8th grade crush on Facebook this year. At 45, I’ve never been married or lived with someone, but I am now and it’s better than I could have hoped.
dweomer
@R-Jud: thank you.
Disclaimer: I am not trying to be a bummer here (for me absolute joy and utter horror are inextricably linked).
The honesty in this thread is heartwarming.
Tax Analyst
@Politically Lost:
Not to be too snarky, but I’ll bet your client is somewhat less sanguine about your epiphanous moment.
General Stuck
@DougJ:
Stuart Smalley saves his blog thread
KDP
Strangely enough, it was receiving a second felony conviction for amphetamine possession in a county that has a rational structure for medium security incarceration. Inmates who worked got a private room, lockdown periods were only during counts, bathrooms were in the pod (not a metal toilet in the room). I worked and benefited from the private rooms. Non-workers shared with one other person.
After three years (1993-1995) living homeless on the street, emotionally and mentally detached from reality, this incarceration provided the interval of safety and security I needed to begin recovering from a period I refer to as a waking, walking nightmare. After contracting chronic fatigue syndrome in 1987 and finding that my personal social support network was not all I’d thought it to be (hindered in part by my inability to ask for help because I needed it so badly), I tried using drugs to function, developed what I believe was PTSD from the trauma of losing my house and my comfortable life after going on disability, and eventually stopped functioning and retreated to a horrific fantasy world.
Since my release in 1996, I have not only recovered physical, emotional and mental stability, but have flourished without benefit of drug treatments or therapy. I have interesting work that pays me enough to live comfortably (Quality systems and salesforce consulting), I own my home (a mobile, but still it’s mine), I finished a BA in Human Development/Women’s Studies last June with a cumulative 4.0 GPA and have started a MPA program, and in 2007 I had my convictions reduced to misdemeanors and expunged.
I am fortunate and content in my life.
Captain Haddock
My impeccable bone structure, and the fact that I am enormously well endowed.
eemom
@eemom:
correction: Joe E. Lewis
he had lots of good quotes about drinking, too.
“A man is never drunk if he can lay on the floor without holding on.”
Southern Beale
Hmm .. interesting question, interesting answers.
Yeah, other than the usual stuff that you chalk up to dumb luck or the spouse thing I’d say quitting my job at the corporate borg in 1995 because my boss was a psycho who had literally brought me to the brink of a nervous breakdown. I decided life was too short and damn if I wasn’t right. I struck out on my own and did rather well.
I’ve generally found that taking risks tends to pay off and now wish I had taken more of them.
MattR
@MobiusKlein: I had a coworker who was stabbed after letting an undercover officer (or police informant – i can’t remember the exact details) into his house who was being pursued by the bad guys. He actually counts it among the best things that happened to him since the doctors at the hospital discovered he had cancer which was then successfully treated because it was caught so early.
TheMightyTrowel
@licensed to kill time: This mostly. Travel from a young age, combined with learning 3 languages other than my mother tongue meant that I was given from an early age a very very radically different view of the world than most of my friends or classmates.
No matter how bad the bad times, I know because I’ve travelled that I can cut and run, that I can rely on myself and that I can survive and thrive in alien places surrounded by people with whom I do not share a language. Having that knowledge at 16 is powerful.
Katharsis
Leaving my childhood home for the Navy, and never living there again.
DougJ
@KDP:
That is truly an inspiring story.
stuckinred
How about breaking my back in a van wreck in 75? I was going from Illinois to Florida with my x and my green beret buddy and his lady. I drove from Urbana to Atlanta and we stopped somewhere in the city to get oil for the van. He took over at the helm and, while fiddling with the 8 track, lost control and hit a telephone pole. The pole snapped and hit on top of the van and his head but the wires tightened and he juts suffered a big cut. I was lying head first on a sleeping bag in the back and got shot forward like a cannon ball. I was a little tucked so I hit on the back of my spine instead of having my head up. I suffered a compression fracture of my T-6. I ended up at Grady Hospital, the big public trauma center for the ATL. The orthopods were from Emory and they were working on a new procedure that was the alternative to a year with screws in my head, in traction and on my back. They took a bone graft of my hip and welded the broken spine and then put harrington rods above and below the broken vert. I got up and walked out in 6 weeks and spent 6 months in a full body cast and another 6 in a brace. You are asking what’s so great about that? Well, first of all, just not being a quad was an incredibly lucky thing. In addition, at that time almost everyone I knew was working union labor at the nuke plant in Clinton but it was obvious I wasn’t going to be doing that kind of work for a long time. I had a bit of my GI bill left and the DVR picked up the rest of my undergrad costs. Thirty-five years later I am as healthy as I can be at 61 and earned a couple more degrees on the way. I don’t know what would have happened if I had not gotten hurt but I see that, along with Vietnam, as a defining point in my life.
Martin
@Politically Lost: I run an office and supervise a number of people. I tell the people that work for me that I fuck up a lot. Every day. Sometimes spectacularly – gloriously even. I expect them to as well. You can learn a lot by reading and such, but you never learn as much, nor retain it as permanently as a job you’ve completely fucked up. And that’s my hitch – you have to learn from it. If my staff fuck up there are two outcomes:
1) They will explain to me in glorious detail everything they did wrong, why they now see that it was wrong, and what they will do differently next time. As punishment, I will probably buy them beer or lunch or something similar. Fuckups + learning get celebrated, and we will share our new knowledge with the rest of the staff. We’re now all better off because so-and-so fucked up.
2) I will excoriate them mercilessly for not learning from their mistakes and remind them that if they again fail to use the opportunity, I’ll fire them. Fuckups + no learning get punished.
So good for you. Sorry the trial was so horrible, particularly sorry on behalf of your client who is the one who really suffered from your failure, but truly that’s the only path forward. Experience is regularly painful to come by. You guys should have a party to celebrate your newfound discovery and to celebrate the fact that your future clients, and therefore your business, will all be better off as a result.
ruemara
Wow. I really had to think about this. I’m not exactly sure. I love my Takkun kitty and he’s a joy. But I think I’m still waiting for “best”. I hope it comes soon. Computers have had the most impact and I love them like I probably shouldn’t. So most impact, Takkun and Apple Computing.
plus, JC, don’t make me agree with WyldePirate again. That was a pretty broad brush.
licensed to kill time
@licensed to kill time:
Replying to myself (after reading all the paeans to reading)…learning to read at a very young age and having parents with a houseful of books set me up to be a traveler, because I had been traveling to far-away places in my mind for many years by the time I hit the road. I could lose myself so thoroughly in a book it felt like I was there.
So, reading and traveling, the two best things!
cleek
i’m also fond of Dr Stokes Gentry, MD, in S. Burlington VT.
he was the first doctor to ever give me asthma medication that actually worked. i can’t count the number of times i was rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night for shots of adrenaline when nothing else would free up my lungs. he gave me a prescription that finally got the asthma under control so i could start to have a normal childhood.
stuckinred
@KDP: Hell yes!!!!!
MadeInAmericA
Several of my high school teachers helping me get a last-minute scholarship at a great university hours away from my Jehovah’s Witness family. If not for those awesome teachers, I’d now be a miserable JW wife and mother, or more likely dead. Yay for teachers who care!
WyldPirate
@Mnemosyne:
Glad you’ve got the blues in a headlock, Mnemosyne. It took me nearly 20 years to find a combination of things and circumstance that worked.
The inner peace is nice, isn’t it?
Good luck!
@Mnemosyne:
Thanks, Maude. It’s amazing what your body can go through and what one can do to turn things around.
someofparts
dweomer – how awful for you. so sorry.
Me along with others here – lifelong love of reading and Eddie the dog and Harriett the cat
KDP
@dweomer: I am sorry for your loss. My godmother lost her oldest son when he was 17 and her youngest when he was 30. She told me that the grief from their loss was the hardest thing she ever confronted.
the Reverend boy
Not sure if this counts as the best but it ranks right up there:
Losing my job at the investment bank and moving to Key West for a couple of years to figure out what to do with the next third of my life.
feebog
I have to say that the best thing that ever happened to me was getting a new boss who was a complete and total bitch. It became very apparent to me very quickly that we were not going to get along. It took me a year and a half of frustration, anger and depression, but I took a downgrade from operations to Labor Relations, which was always what I wanted to do anyway. After a very sucessful 15 year run climbing the Labor Relations ladder I retired, and parlayed that experience into a second carrer as a Labor Arbitrator.
The bitch boss, she got promoted a couple of times until Peter’s Principle kicked in, at which point she was demoted several times. Karma baby.
Southern Beale
@KDP:
Damn, that’s quite a compelling story. Thanks for sharing. You’re an inspiration.
Loneoak
The best thing that has ever happened to me is that the Zombie Apocalypse hasn’t come. Yet.
asiangrrlMN
@ruemara: Awwwww, Takkun is sweet and cute.
Jado
Meeting the friends I have met at the times I have met them.
Martin wasn’t necessarily a “best friend”, being we were never quite on the same page, but we were close enough that I felt less alone, sad, and terrified than I had prior. We were abnormal together.
Rick for being my best friend, even in the Time Apart when we didn’t talk. He was the first person who got me completely, and he is still my best friend outside my marriage. We were normal together, but only for a two-person definition of normal.
Tony and Paul for thinking I might be cool. Having someone “get” you is a necessary first step toward social normality, but having someone think you’re cool, or might be cool, is the first step toward thinking you just might be. They were normal – I might be normal too.
Sonny, Joe, and Tom for automatically thinking I might be cool enough to hang out with. They’re normal. I am normal. And I am able to interact with normal people every day without cringing and/or waiting for the abuse to start.
Jonathan, for reminding me that I can be abnormal at the same time I am normal. Geek Life is forever, but my life is more than Geek Life.
Thanks, everyone. You really did change my life.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Ok, but the best thing to ever happen to me really is my husband + my kids. So, hmmm. If we eliminate them from consideration?
…thinking…
…still thinking….
Ok, it has to be going to Israel back when I went to Israel for the first time.
Much as the place gives me endless angst and heartache and heartburn, if I hadn’t gone there, I would not have discovered my true home, or that I was at Mt. Sinai with the rest of the Jews — nor would I have gotten my genuinely fabulous husband + kids out of the deal.
That’s good for me to remember. Much as the place can enrage me, Israel is also the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Different handle
Finding the right psychiatrist.
I lost a spouse and most of my 20s to body dysmorphic disorder, of all stupid things. By the time I was 29, I could hardly leave the house or be around other people, I was so repulsed and embarrassed by myself.
Through an old friend’s recommendation, I got hooked up with a doctor who understood and had experience with the condition, and over the course of a year and a half, got me through it. 99%. There are vestiges, but I’m functional again.
I am so angry that that stupid, stupid problem cost me the best years of my youth, my spouse, my job, and nearly the rest of my family. But at least now I get to make up for lost time, and feeling like my old happy, functional self again has been great. I have a new spouse, a happy healthy child, a new job, new friends, and a new life. Sometimes you do get second chances.
Cain
Gosh, I don’t really have any one thing. Everything is good for me.. so I can’t really pick any one thing that changed my life around or anything like that. Maybe, getting a pet was a life changing thing for me. Looks like it is the same for a lot of other people.
cain
Garbo
Surviving the loss of my mom. Wasn’t sure I would, but now I can handle anything.
The love and companionship of animals my whole life. Steady, real, present, true, hilarious, better than humans in every respect except the opposable thumbs thing.
Dropping out of college and finding the world did not end, a real passion for learning vs. studying, I could make a great living, and my Dad would come to respect my sense, wisdom and intellect without the fancy paper. Hunh.
ruemara
@KDP:
This is very wonderful and I am glad I was here to read it.
@asiangrrlMN:
And boy, does he know it. Walks all over me, literally.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Bud: That’s lovely!
ET
I have to have 3:
Spending a semester studying in London.
Finding a career where I like going to work.
Getting my cat.
stuckinred
Getting fired from the post office in 73 because I sort of forgot to write down a little special court martial I go in Korea (something about some 5kw generators). I have buddies who just retired from there last year. I would have. . . gone postal!
Martin
@KDP: Well, I believe you win the turning lemons into lemonade prize. Good on you.
Pavlov's Dog
Huh? Nobody has mentioned Ayn Rand or Atlas Shrugged? ;-)
Mine was definitely getting a job in the international oil industry shortly after college. Seeing the world really changed my priorities/values. Lost whatever materialism I had, became a saver, and retired very very early (having a successful wife doesn’t hurt either).
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Oh wait!
My mom going into rehab when I was a kid.
That saved our lives right there, and the 12 step programs have given me endless tools with which to face my own life’s difficulties.
Better than going to Israel and/or finding my husband? Don’t know. But probably. Kinda more decisive.
General Stuck
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
In all seriousness, This.
scav
Books. Again with the it’s theoretically possible I could read almost before I could speak, certainly before I can remember. That and growing up in a house/community where reality mattered, eccentricity was no bar, and things were still made. We heated with wood and Dad built computers from kits.
srv
Is that what Balloon-Juice is? A substitute for the Army, where a bunch of yelling know-nothings from around the world whip you mentally and emotionally into bad shape?
At least your spelling improved.
Best thing that happened to me? A second grade teacher who pulled me out of the back corner where all the other teachers put me and figured out I had a learning disability. A condition that many doctors still to this day consider untreatable. There happened to be one crackpot doctor west of the Mississippi who didn’t think so, and we just happened to live in the same city.
I went from throwing books to reading three of them a week.
RosiesDad
In 1984, I was in business in NYC when my partner’s kid sister came home with a mixed breed puppy that she bought from a junkie in front of the Studio 54 nightclub over the weekend. Their parents would not let her keep the pup and so I ended up with him. As a result, I reconnected with the veterinarian I had worked for as a high school student. Some months later, he encouraged me to go back to school to redo my sciences with the aim of getting into vet school. Along the way, I met the woman who would become my wife and the mother of our three children. I graduated veterinary school, at age 34, in 1991 and have been living my childhood dream ever since.
Taking that puppy home in December 1984 changed the course of my life and was by far the best thing that ever happened to me.
Bill H.
Walking decks once trod by heroes. The US Navy Submarine Service comprised less than 6% of the manpower of the Navy during WW2, and it sank 52% of all Japanese shipping that was sunk; more than all other agencies combined. For more than a year it was the only offensive weapon the US had against the Japanese, and that service suffered the highest casualty rate of any service in that war. Serving on ships that had battlet records in that theatre of combat is without question the best thing that I ever experienced, and is still a central part of who I am fifty years later.
Second place would be joining AA in 1982, just nine years after my father did so and thirteen weeks before he died of cancer. The last time my father looked at his eldest son he saw a sober man.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@KDP: Wow. That is something else. Thank you so much for sharing that!
licensed to kill time
@TheMightyTrowel: We might have been separated at birth, your story sounds so similar to mine, including the age I started traveling.
New Yorker
I dunno, choosing to attend Cornell University? I got a number of great experiences out of it.
One, I learned how to really think, which didn’t happen in high school. I learned how to weigh evidence, and to reason. Contrary to the fever dreams of David Horowitz, I was exposed to a lot of right-wing ideas for the first time (neoconservatism, for one).
Two, I have a lot of great friends from that experience. I really don’t know what it is to be lonely, because I have such a good group of friends from college who I still see all the time.
Three, it opened my eyes to how much nonsense the idea of meritocracy in the US is. Sure, there were plenty of really smart people I met there (one guy I was friends with is a post-doc in physics at Harvard, another is a professor of aerospace engineering at GWU), but there were also plenty of disinterested mediocrities who came from wealth and had a job lined up at daddy’s hedge fund no matter how many classes they skipped or “C”s they got. It certainly led me to question not higher education, but the whole idea of ranking colleges as “elite” or (I guess) “vulgar” (or something).
OK, so maybe college did make me into a flaming lefty, but my aversion to the snobbery and real elitism that I saw at Cornell probably helps me in my current job, which requires working with a lot of blue-collar people from Ohio and Indiana and Kentucky and treating them like competent adults. How’s that for east coast “elitism”?
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
It is! And I forgot to mention that I’m also happy that the psychiatrist my shrink sent me to was a genius at prescribing, because he gave me the only anti-depressant that also helps with ADD (Wellbutrin). So I was unknowingly getting help with two comorbid issues.
I was only officially diagnosed with the ADD this year, but at least now I know why I can drink a cup of coffee right before bed and sleep like a baby (ADD brains process stimulants differently than normal people’s brains).
renegademom
going through my “jerry springer” divorce, losing everything I had, and hitting my “bottom”. it gave me gratitude.
Perfect Tommy
After 20 years of being a commercial fisherman / bartender / bouncer, I took a shot at college, got accepted provisionally to Penn State and now I work at NASA. The man who accepted my application is named Gary Burkle – never met him – never really had a chance to thank him, but the chance he gave me changed my life.
16shellsfroma30aught6
I graduated college into a real shitstain of an economy that’s probably only going to get worse, at least with regard to decent paying jobs with any kind of benefits or retirement. So no, I don’t blame myself for that particular mess.
But I was the first person in my family able to graduate from college. That was pretty awesome.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
I don’t like “best” choices because there are so many good things to choose from. What’s the best food? Whatever delicious thing I last ate, probably. What’s the best car? The next new one I will buy.
Here are several of the best things that ever happened to me or best things I ever did, which is sort of the same thing but not really:
1. Like WyldPirate, I survived a heart attack.
2. When I was 7 I got a piano. I have played one every day of my life since if there was one around to play, which has been most of the time.
3. I quit school and became a pilot against the advice of just about everyone I knew, and I have never regretted it. The resulting adventures were irreplaceable.
4. I lived a couple of blocks from the biggest library in the state when I was a kid, and spent a lot of my summers there getting a free and delicious self-education.
5. I grew up with people who were educated in music, the law, history, and politics. They were kind enough to let me hang around their activities and soak it all in.
6. I have met a rather amazing list of interesting people, including Louis Armstrong, Eleanor Roosevelt, two Arizona governors, Colonel Sanders, Ralph Nader, Eugene McCarthy, and the Chief Clerk of the US Senate, who let me wander the floor of that chamber, sit in the president’s chair, and bang the gavel.
7. I have had the most amazing teachers, mentors, friends, and other angels walk into my life and bring me blessings of every description, which I could never possibly repay.
the Reverend boy
May not be the best but it ranks right up there. I lost my job at an investment bank working as an administrative assistant and have since moved to Key West to figure out wwhat to do with the next third of my life.
superking
When I was in high school, I got to spend one summer at Stanford University taking classes as part of a program they have for gifted high school students. I grew up in a part of the country that doesn’t value intellectual pursuits very highly, and being able to spend two months at a great university with other people who had the same inclinations really opened my eyes. I’m sure tons of people here have nerd camp stories of one sort or another, but it really is important and absolutely changed the course of my life.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@General Stuck: You know it.
I sometimes think it’s really all together too bad that people have to go through hell to get to AA/Alanon/Alateen, because honest to God people, these are just rules to live by.
Annamal
Walking all the way across Spain, took me from being timid, unsociable and completely unwilling to assert myself into kind of a hard-ass.
stuckinred
@Bill H.: My dad felt the same way about the USS Crosby, APD17.
Salute to you old salt.
arguingwithsignposts
Well, I’m not getting into “best” because that’s a fool’s errand, but the BJ commentariat has been among the top 5. Lady Smudge has done her part too. And The Somebody. But I thank you folks again for keeping me going when I was not so much. And in honor of that, fuck you all! :)
Evil Parallel Universe
Like some others, getting involved with technology/start-ups. Though I think “most transformative” is how I look at it, rather than “best.”
Back in ’94 I was working for my Dad, who had a client who claimed she wanted to invest in some software. Her son (who now, for other reasons has the nickname “Idiot Boy” and not in a good way) suggested I go to a software show and try to run into a West Point classmate of his who worked at Bear Stearns who would be there as well.
I had no desire to go – the client was a faker, never going to invest, and I KNEW it would be a total waste of my time.
My Dad, who lurvs to go to any event and meet everyone, told me to go – “you never know.” So, I ran into the West Point classmate, we hit it off, became good friends, and when his brother wanted to start an Internet company a few months later he told his brother “I’ll get you the money so long as [the EPU] is a part of it.” And that is how I got started started working with/starting new technology (for the most part) companies for the past 15 years, which, for all its life without a net aspects, I really love – way better than almost any real job I could think of, and certainly better than where traditional career paths would most likely have taken me.
So, attending a software show in NYC 16 years ago that I didn’t want to attend changed the course of my career, and certainly my life as well.
Politically Lost
@Tax Analyst:
Thankfully there are few things going for me in that department:
a.) I am a contract attorney and my name is not attached to any of the pleadings.
b.) At a mediation the clients were told directly this would be the case by a very experienced third party trial attorney.
c.) Amazingly, the clients are not unhappy. But, that could change, obviously.
Southern Beale
Y’all who are choosing “fuck what John sez, I’m going with the wife” answer have me going all warm and mushy inside.
Just sayin’.
Culture of Truth
They are going to put 24 IHOPS in NYC. It’s hard to beat that.
stuckinred
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: I quit after 35 years in one day by myself. The rule, don’t drink.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@dweomer: Aw honey. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry for you. We should all get to watch our babies grow.
freelancer
Losing my religion.
Discovering my sense of humor, and learning how to make people laugh.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Alex S.: That’s all manner of awesome.
martha
I figured out when I was in my early teens that it was OK to feel like I was adopted in my family (even though I wasn’t). That it was OK to live the life I wanted, read the books that were my lifeline, and be the person who was unlike anyone else in the family. I still joke about being adopted and friends comment that I must be. But that ability to separate from what felt so alien and rebel quietly, using books and intellect and introspection saved me from making a lot of really dumb decisions later in life. An inner life made it possible, I think, despite the noise that almost killed me.
asiangrrlMN
@ruemara: Just like my boys. When I try to do any exercise on the floor (like crunches), Raven will sit on my stomach. I am their personal playground, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Politically Lost
@Martin:
Thanks Martin. That’s about the healthiest thing I’ve read in quite awhile.
Justin
My philosophy degree. Nothing screwed my head on so tight as a couple years of intense reading, writing, and arguing. It taught me discipline in my thoughts, attention to detail, and most importantly, the limits of logic and reason. It just scoured out my head, cleaning away layer after layer of sloppy thinking.
John S.
My wife truly is the best thing that ever happened to me. We met nearly 16 years ago, and my life has been better every day since.
Roger Moore
Two things: discovering I was going to be a chemist while I was still in High School. It took me longer to catch on than it should have, but I knew by the time I was applying to college what I was going to do.
Two: being a hematopoetic stem cell donor.
iriepirate21
2 Chicks? I did 2 chicks once, and that was pretty cool. Although I was pretty hammered in the back of a Math Fraternity at UCLA.
BGinCHI
@Jarem: I thought this would end:
“And now that woman is my dominatrix.”
You Don't Say
Traveling. My parents moved to Japan when I went off to college so on vacations I got to see a lot of Asia. Then, after college, I had a series of jobs that sent me all over Europe. And during my entire life, from childhood to present, I’ve traveled all over the US to every state but a few. Don’t regret a second of it.
Culture of Truth
I refuse to answer since it’s still ahead of me.
El Tiburon
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
This is a pretty good one. When I was maybe 8 or 9, I received a bundle of Judy Blume books for xmas. Boy was I pissed. Who the hell wanted to read books while not in school? I never minded reading, but didn’t really consider it a pastime you did on your own.
Anyway, one day I sat down and grabbed one, maybe it was “Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing” or “Are You There God It’s Me Margaret” and I was magically transported away into world and lives of these characters.
Nothing more exciting than a trip to the bookstore (Go Book People!) to hunt down the next, great read.
MikeTheZ
OT, but since it is positive I’ll put it here: Bernie Sanders is on CSPAN2 filibustering the tax bill. Its something to see.
TheMightyTrowel
@licensed to kill time: Incidentally, in close second place is ‘spending most of a year drunk in the south of france’. I’m a bit of a control freak and it got very out of hand about 10 years ago. I ran away to Provence, got very bored and began drinking. I stopped being a control freak and the whole world opened back up. I don’t drink much anymore (wonderful love of my life gives off de-stress ions like a cat!) but red wine and provencal sun staved off a nervous breakdown.
The Other Chuck
Losing my religion and gradually going from a born-again christian to a total raving atheist. It didn’t make me happy in the least, and I can add existential angst to my depression most of the time now, but at least I’m not living my life in fear of a vengeful god anymore.
Felonious Wench
I come from a family that has bipolar as commonly as they have ugly feet. I grew up in chaos, so I therefore refused to be bipolar. My undergrad is psyc. I educated myself about the disease relentlessly. I was NOT going to have this illness, and if I showed signs of it, I was not going to be weak and give into it, no way.
So for me, it was when I finally went to a psychiatrist who looked me in the eye, told me I was bipolar, that it wasn’t my fault, and life didn’t have to be “so fucking hard.”
That was 11 years ago. I have a man who is my light and 2 amazing, funny sons. But had I not just given up and admitted I need help, I’d not have any of it. So, the day I gave up was the best thing that ever happened to me.
FW
andy
I guess for me it was getting mental health care starting about 15 years ago. There are a lot of big gaps in my life, and there are a lot of things I’ll never be able to experience, and life really is kind of shitty, but at least the sleeplessness, the raging paranoia, the constant fear, the constant screaming monologues in my head during my conscious hours, all of that is gone. I can at least appreciate the prefect little things I come across in life, like a spider building a web, or the way bread crust crackles when it comes out of the oven, or how everything is soft and reflective after a rainstorm. It’s not a lot, but it’ll have to do.
Kyle
Being gay. This isn’t the first time I’ve answered this question that way. I have three degrees and I am a partner is a law firm is San Francisco, having been born to lower-middle class folks in the middle of nowhere Alabama. If I had been straight, I’d likely be a power company employee currently sitting in a tree stand hoping a deer will walk by. Instead, I live in the best city in the world, and have seen a great deal of the world to compare it to. I’m convinced none of that would have happened if I weren’t gay.
aimai
@MattR:
This reminds me of a scene from The Pillowman in which one character reads another character the story of a “gift” that is at once horrific and wonderful. Boy is waiting by a bridge and a man comes to his little village and asks for directions. Boy helps the man and in return the man offers him a “gift” which he “won’t understand.” Boy agrees to accept the gift and the man pulls out an axe and chops off his toes. Later, it becomes clear that the man is the eventual Pied Piper of Hamelin and the boy is the little lame boy who, because he couldn’t walk, can’t follow the other children and be lost to the town forever.
aimai
KDP
And the winner for the best thing to happen today is:
Bernie Sanders has been speaking out against the proposed tax cut plan for the last 3 hours. With specific citations. Check out C-Span2 live feed.
@MikeTheZ:Oops, you beat me to it. http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN2.aspx
Culture of Truth
If forced to choose, I will also go with everyone’s wife.
cleek
@Cain:
this
BGinCHI
There are a lot of teacher examples on this thread, and I’m not surprised.
If it weren’t for some of my teachers, at all levels from the 2nd grade (thanks Mrs. Cockrill for lending me all those books), to undergrad and grad school, I’d be doing god knows what in the rural midwest.
They literally saved my life.
So, thank your teachers/professors. As one now myself, I know how good it feels.
El Tiburon
@Culture of Truth:
Damn, another good one. Expecting birth of first child* in about a month.
*Have a 19-mos old step-daughter and love her like my own, but, not quite the exhilaration of watching junior pop out of the old oven and knowing he is your own creation.
South of I-10
@MikeTheZ: I’m watching it too. Good stuff.
freelancer
@cleek:
Yeah, she’s awesome.
Laura
The best thing? My college roommate finding me passed out on the floor of our dorm room almost 40 years ago and dragging me over to the infirmary, and the nurse who sat by my bed and yelled in my face for over three hours to stay awake; I would not be here now without them. And I’m grateful too for all the other mistakes I’ve made in life (and there have been some whoppers) – I’ve learned from every one of them.
Michael
The three way between me and a pair of twin stewardesses that I wrote to Bob Guccione about would have been awesome if it had been real….
Breezeblock
Bernie Sanders doing an ACTUAL filibuster of the tax deal right now.
Not the chickenshit filibuster that the Pukes always do.
Whoops! Sorry!
tkogrumpy
Samuel Clemens and George Carlin, I know I’m not alone.
Raenelle
My best thing is easy, because it was so obvious in its effects. I got sober. My life went downhill for decades, then I got sober (9/22/1979) and it’s been getter better ever since.
This is not analogous to being a bad person, then becoming a good one. That may well be one of the best things ever, too. But that’s not what happened here. This is directly and exactly an experience of suffering from a debilitating and wasting disease, then finding an easy, simple and affordable treatment that put it into remission and made me healthy again.
About dogs generally–they just seem to be an outright generous and undeserved gift of the universe to us humans.
BR
@Breezeblock:
I’m not sure it’s a filibuster since he’s not actually preventing a vote on anything.
parenthetical
My band got to open for Otis Day and the Knights when I was just a junior in high school. Not the *best thing ever* but still pretty cool.
Mike E
Having my sister take me to buy The Beatles Red and Blue double albums when I was 13. Then, much later, the birth of my Miss E, who loves the Fabs practically without her dad’s insistence. And puppehs and kittehs, also. Too.
Culture of Truth
The reverse may or may not be true, but I am certainly the best thing to happen to my cat who I rescued.
BGinCHI
@El Tiburon: Oh, absolutely agree.
Elementary school librarians can make a big impact. Plus, remember the Bookmobile? Anyone else wait till that magical RV came around to your school?
Angela
@Bill H.: Okay, I was on the verge of tears reading down the list, but this one made me lose it. I am so glad your dad got to see a sober son before he died.
licensed to kill time
@TheMightyTrowel: This is pretty funny because I spent some time enamored with the poppy in a far-away land about which I shall say no more, except that it seemed to fit the place and the time.
Butch
Becoming a scuba divemaster, because it opened up a new world for me.
IrishGirl
Leaving my mom’s house when I was 12 years old. It totally changed the track that my life was on for the better.
asiangrrlMN
@MikeTheZ: This is so freaking cool. I’m a bit worried about Bernie, though. He looks tired.
@Cain: Third this.
Thanks for this thread, Cole. Needed it.
MikeTheZ
@South of I-10: He’s comparing the rich to heroin addicts. If they showed this in prime time, I’d watch it every night. Maybe NBC could do it, their ratings can only go up.
BGinCHI
@aimai: Saw a great production of this last winter at a little storefront theater here in Chi. Amazing.
silentbeep
Meditation. Since I started meditating seven years ago, I have become much calmer, happier and much more grounded. It kinda changed my life.
aimai
Apparently its off limits but I have to say that the birth of my first child (and the birth of my second child) are the life changing experiences without which I wouldn’t and couldn’t be happy today. Up until then I was going on autopilot doing the things that were expected of me: college, career, writing my dissertation, thinking I would teach anthropology. And don’t get me wrong: books and anthropology are very important to me and have totally shaped my life and my world view. Yet having my children revealed to me, like a crack of lightning in a dark world (or a stream of bat’s piss) just what true physicality and being in the world can mean. First, being pregnant puts you into a completely different relationship with time, your own body, humanity, evolution, and your mind. Second, giving birth unmedicated is a challenge that is both incredibly common and everyday and quite rare and overwhelming. Third, having and holding that baby and raising those children boots you into a mental space that’s totally new (for me) in this progress oriented, materialistic, society. You slow down, you move to a child’s time, you relearn what has become invisible, and you totally give of yourself over and over and over again without expecting any kind of recompense. Its like throwing yourself into the ocean, not knowing how to swim, and finding yourself buoyed up by dolphins. Not to go all peggy noonan on y’all.
And to the poster deowen (?) who posted upthread about having and losing a child within 15 days. My heart breaks for you. Thank you for sharing that grief with us.
aimai
WereBear (itouch)
@KDP: Incredible. Mr WereBear has CFIDS. I must tell him your story.
Todd
I once ate at an Applebee’s salad bar with Obama. He seemed really unnatural the entire time, but it was still the greatest experience of my life.
The Bobs
Being admitted to MIT. No doubt about it, the best time of my life.
agrippa
getting married to my first wife.
getting married to my second wife.
are the two best things.
worst thing:
first wife died.
aimai
@BGinCHI:
Oh, yeah. That is one amazing play. I saw it in a little theater on the Cape. Stunning. I really miss the theater in Chicago. When I lived there I saw amazing things every week in the most astonishing venues–Theater Oobleck, which performed upstairs from a funeral home, things like that.
aimai
aimai
@BGinCHI:
Oh, yeah. That is one amazing play. I saw it in a little theater on the Cape. Stunning. I really miss the theater in Chicago. When I lived there I saw amazing things every week in the most astonishing venues–Theater Oobleck, which performed upstairs from a funeral home, things like that.
aimai
Angela
Best – A good friend who asked me when my sons were 6 months, 2 years and 4 years old “Are you really going to raise them in this chaos?” I was married to a very functional cocaine addict and it was like a light bulb went off. I started going to Al-Anon, started therapy, and left that marriage and found sanity. It was her question that brought out my desire to protect my sons in a way I was never protected. That’s the best for me.
J.R.
The best to happen to me this week was that on a major television network, on a hit prime time show, two gay kids sang a romantic Christmas duet to each other.
harlana
Having (good Democratic) parents who are still alive and healthy in their 80’s.
RosiesDad
@Breezeblock: awesome. just threw his campaign some $.
artem1s
in no particular order…
spending 2 summers traveling and studying in Europe when in my 20s. what others have said about independence and seeing how others live. wouldn’t trade it. I had a dream just last month about the Palazzo del Vecchio.
spent 5 years teaching college level courses in minimum and medium level prisons. taught me that circumstances we grow up with can make us. but also taught me how hard people will work if they are given an opportunity to get out. also taught me how to recognize the difference between the merely bad and broken and those who are outright insane. We use prison too much and most of the people I met there don’t belong but a handful do. And I mean locked-up-and-key-thrown-away-crazy. Mind you, they aren’t always unpleasant so it can be hard to tell who they are, but they should never be let out. It just ain’t safe.
therapy.
sailing.
my fifth career, non profit management and fund raising and the opportunity to go back to school and leave the hell that is the retail jewelry world behind forever.
Bnut
@stuckinred: Wow, your story is so similar to mine it’s not even funny. I too broke my back and leg in a wreck (and was lucky to walk away at all, since one Marine died and another is paralyzed from the chest down). It got me out of the endless deployment loop GWOT brings (we were gearing up for another Astan jaunt at that time). Thanks to the GI Bill and discharge benefits, I got by BA (not that it’s helping atm) and I am a much better and happier person overall.
BGinCHI
@aimai: Saw this there last year:
http://theateroobleck.com/plays/an-apology-2009
Great stuff. And one of the best posters I’ve seen in ages. Currently hanging in my office.
You ever see anything at Neo-Futurists? “Too much light makes the baby go blind”?
Angela
And John Cole – I’ve had a fairly shitty week too. Thanks for this thread, life looks a lot brighter after reading thru the comments and thinking about all the bests I have in my life.
Athenae
Working at my college newspaper. Not only did it push me beyond what I thought I was capable of mentally and physically (turns out five days with no sleep, you actually DO hallucinate), but it showed me that most of what sucks in the world comes from decent people being willing to take no for an answer, believing others when they say failure is inevitable, and confusing “pleasant” with “possible.”
It taught me what it meant to fight for something I wanted and cared about and thought was important, and I never once in my life wonder if I’ve ever done anything that mattered, because I know it for sure. The people there taught me how to write and report and argue and stand up and win and lose and get back up the next day and go back to work.
I met my husband and my best friend there, and I have a whole entire life I wouldn’t have dreamed of without that place. It’s responsible for damn near everything I am.
A.
Jerry
The best thing that ever happened to me was post 33 and 34 being right next to each other. (Man I hope these stay numbered the same since I’m too lazy to link at this point)
Congratulations to poster #33.
RSA
“Name the best thing that has ever happened to you.”
Okay, after getting married, I’d say it was this: Finding out about an overseas position opening up in the company I worked for, getting it, and arriving in Germany in the mid-1980s at the age of 23. My wife and I stayed for five years. We learned the language, traveled through Europe and a good portion of the rest of the world, and basically discovered a new perspective on life. (Before the move, I’d been thinking about taking night classes to get an MBA, like some of my friends. Meh.)
Frank Chow
Moving to Chicago.
I reignited several passions I had lost while residing in DC. I rediscovered indie music, politics, and acting while understanding how to balance all three. The cherry on top was meeting my future wife.
HL_guy
An NSF grant to one of my college professors… who used some of it to hire me as a research assistant… where I met my wife and wrote my first peer-reviewed paper… which got me into grad school… etc.
So thanks to the PI’s who wrote that grant 16 years ago. We didn’t set the scientific world on fire with that research, but you gave my life a good kick-start, which I appreciate.
BGinCHI
@Frank Chow: Have you been to Hot Doug’s?
That might change your life all over again.
stuckinred
@Bnut: Glad to hear you are making progress. The wreck stuff was just the start and it took a long time to get it together. Putting down the blow and booze was key but that was quite a while later.
geg6
@freelancer:
Make that my #4. Also one of the best things that every happened in my life. Free at last, free at last! Thank FSM almighty, free at last!
El Tiburon
@Hannah:
I was a very apathetic and ill-informed person well into my-mid 30s. I voted for W. (first time to ever vote) simply because he was from Texas and I heard that Al Gore was some kind of unhinged sissy liberal.
During this time I figured if I watched a little Chris Matthews and some Bill O’Reilly, I was getting a well-rounded dose information. Basically, although I had a college degree and consider myself very intelligent, I was an ignorant hayseed when it came to all-things political.
So we used to have a weekly happy-hour with the fellas. Invariably the discussion would veer to current events and politics. It was all fun and games until 9-11. I began to take it all a little more seriously, but had no knowledge-base on how to decipher or decide on who or what to believe.
One of the happy-hour regulars recommended a book by Al Franken, I think it was “Rush Limbaugh is a Big-Fat Idiot”. At the time I knew Al Franken from SNL, but sort of considered him the left’s version of Rush LImbaugh: just another blowhard.
Well, when Bush started talking about invading Iraq, I felt something wasn’t right. So I took the plunge and read the Franken book. That book switched the light on. It was like a was given the special-key to understanding how the media and politics operate.
Fortunately the internet and the blogs were just good enough that I could now independently veryify what Franken was writing. Shortly thereafter Air America began. I turned from reading fiction-only to nothing but non-stop political books: David Brock, Joe Conason – I mean, there was no shortage of political books during this period. I subscribed to The Nation, The Progessive, American Prospect, The Washington Spectator, TNR (What?)
For nearly 6 years it was all I did: consume all I could about politics and criticisms of the MSM. I discovered Fair and Counterspin.
I look back pre-Al Franken and I shudder at my ignorance.
We have a lot of work to do, and although my reach is small, I try everyday to spread the truth to friends, family and co-workers. I now feel more like a responsible and worthy citizen of this great country.
I give all the credit to Al Franken and was fortunate to meet him, along with Molly Ivins,
It was truly an amazing journey and I am glad I went through it.
Bnut
@stuckinred: Well, in my case, blow was associated with my joining the military. I’ll let you fill in the blanks.
JenJen
Neat question!
Honestly, the first thing that pops into my mind was the moment when, many many years ago now, I decided for some odd reason to go to Bartending School.
I was already a college graduate with a BFA, but (outside of playing in rock bands) I’d been unhappy in my career, and thought, well, why don’t I try bartending on the weekends? Might be fun.
That little decision to take a little two-week course doing something I’d never tried before launched me into a career I’d never considered before, and ever since taking the class, I’ve been a bartender, a promoter, a manager, a Wine Director, a Food and Beverage Director, a Hotel Executive, an Instructor, and an Independent Consultant. If I hadn’t taken that class, I’d still be miserable, and I never would’ve discovered that I always belonged in the F&B World. I love the people I work with, and I love what I do. And I’m very, very lucky to love what I do.
Frank Chow
@BGinCHI: Yup the foie gras duck sausage was killer. One of the finest gems in Chicago!
WyldPirate
@freelancer:
“Every whisper
Of every waking hour I’m
Choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool, fool
Oh no, I’ve said too much”
Hell yeah, freelancer. Losing my religion was a clarifying moment in my life as well.
Cay
Signing my contract to be a science teacher 14 years ago.
KDP
@WereBear (itouch): I seem to be in remission in terms of negative affect on function, but I have had to learn to say no and to withdraw when necessary.
Loving Bernie Sanders right now.
Keith G
White male head start was a help, but I knew that I am gay since jr high 40 yrs ago. Had a great deal of fun at Ohio State, and got started on my professional career. All good things.
Got my poz HIV test in ’90. In ’06, PCP kicked my ass put me in hospital for a month, convalescent care for two. What parts of my life that did not strip away, depression eventually ejected.
Two years ago, my first boyfriend looked me up. We met in jr high. Now we are back together and life has never been as happy. He and his two boys are my best thing.
I am lucky.
Jasper
@Kitty:
Only been four years, but that’s it for me as well. Not many people who haven’t been there get the “being an alcoholic” AND “getting sober” thing, but, yeah, the whole deal changed my life for the better in ways I can’t possibly explain.
Helps that I’m married to a great woman who stayed with me through the hellish times to see me to the other side.
stuckinred
@Bnut:
Got in a little hometown jam
Sent me off. . .
here’s a little thing I sent to a VA blog
Tom Hilton
Hiking in the Rockies when I was a kid. One of the many things for which I am immensely grateful to my parents is that they brought me up to love the outdoors (and mountains in particular).
aimai
I guess I should add, in light of the Chicago reunion going on in the comment thread, putting a personal Ad in the Chicago Reader twenty (!) years ago. I was a very shy person and had never dated anyone. I turned thirty, put an Ad in the paper, had 88 responses, dated 12 guys, had a total blast, met Mr. Aimai dated him for four years, married him, and have two children with him now.
Someone way upthread said that after taking a major risk/gamble with their life their life improved dramatically and that the thing they learned (which they wished they’d learned earlier) was “take more risks.” That’s really maybe the most important thing anyone has ever said to me and I think its profoundly true. Take more risks. I am mulling over what risks I need to take next.
aimai
R-Jud
@Frank Chow:
Sigh. That was good for me, too. I should probably move back. I could use some re-igniting right now.
Kilks
Extended family. While my parents and sis are great, i would never have survived my first year of teaching without my aunts and grandmother who were teachers supporting me.
Also, running keeps me sane and I love it and need it.
stuckinred
@Jasper: It’s hard because, in their hearts, people know alcohol is a trap and a fucking corporate trap at that, but it’s soooo cool.
scav
@BGinCHI: Well, if we’re going down that route, there are some stuff as Pasticceria Natalina that will do you no harm whatsoever and may, on the right day, be life-changing or life-affirming or any number of good things. Alas! It’s their last year, they’re giving it up in 11 months they told me.
JMC in the ATL
Being diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea and getting my CPAP machine. After years of feeling like a walking zombie, that little machine gave me back my life.
WereBear (itouch)
@KDP: Most awesome. And that is something everyone should learn.
To pick up on a theme developing here, I am grateful I moved to the Adirondack Park ten years ago after the complete collapse of my previous life. I got a job, a husband, and a reconnection to my spiritual side. All in ways I don’t think would be possible anywhere else.
Calouste
Maybe the best thing ever happened to me was when I was about 17 and a promising young chess player. I was going through a purple patch and one of my friends was commenting that a lot of my wins were down to luck. Another one replied though that if are in good form in chess, you “create your own luck”, i.e. you have a good eye for opportunities that come around in the game to improve your position and eventually win the game, and you take them.
Since then not many good things have happened to me, I made them happen, created my own luck, including walking out of two crappy jobs and finding fantastically better ones.
Xel
Family, friends, living in a decent country (Sweden).
I hated the army and I loathe most people and the civilization I live in, but there are good things in this world and I have a fair share of them.
Tsulagi
With this year quickly closing out, on the drive to work today was thinking of the best happening this sucky year. This ranks up there among best ever for me. Bonus it involves shit turning into caviar.
Early this year a trucker brainfarted bringing 18 wheels of hate onto my car and me. Car didn’t make it. I LOVED that car; the car loved me too. She gave her all for me. God I miss her.
Anyway, I’m laying in a hospital bed in pain the painkillers weren’t killing. Super Bowl was coming up and I wasn’t going to be with friends, acquaintances, co-workers and people I didn’t know indulging in an orgy of beer, bourbon, scotch, trash talk, betting pools, and plenty of gut/artery busting food. Tradition. SO had informed me there was no way she was going to bring in even a single beer for me that day. She had my wallet, and they cut off my clothes while I was unconscious in the ER. Best I could do would be to walk out the hospital with my bare ass showing to a 7/11 and plead for the mercy of strangers. In a drugged haze, I think I actually thought of doing that. Life sucked big ass. Poor me.
Game Day. Started off feeling sorry for myself. Was grieving for my car. Then the SO and our two spawn showed up. My little girl had a chair pulled up next to my bed and spent almost the entire game with her head leaning against my arm or someway touching. She’s so sweet. Son was on his best low-maintenance behavior. During half when he saw me trying to reach for the remote, he jumped up, grabbed it and asked what I wanted to see. He loves football and plays it in a pee-wee league, but spent half the game watching me rather than the TV to see if there was anything he could do or get for me. SO was doing the same and had relented bringing me in a big roast beef sandwich and cheesecake from a deli. She was being all sweet and attentive. And I knew beneath the smiles and concern she was busting a gut not bitching at me yet for not wearing my seatbelt.
It was the best Super Bowl experience ever.
mantis
Successfully quitting booze.
Was an inveterate drunk who was weeks away from giving himself a stroke (according to the doctor who examined me, anyway) at the ripe old age of 22, quit cold turkey, went back to college, then grad school, met my wife along the way, and now some 12 years later things are pretty damned good, considering. All because of hitting bottom and experiencing so much self-hatred that it was either death or recovery. Made the right choice.
Aaron S. Veenstra
Getting laid off from a middling web development/sysadmin job during the 2001 recession, and deciding to go to grad school instead of waiting it out. Following that decision, I got to spend seven years living in my favorite city in the world, met my wife, found an awesome circle of friends, discovered what seems to be my calling, got a lot smarter and learned how to learn properly. Also, my wife deciding to download a calorie-counting iPhone app prompted me to do so as well, and I subsequently lost 90 pounds, which I guess also flows from that original event. Now I’m a happy, healthy, assistant professor with a great wife, a nice house and many wonderful pets. Thanks, recession!
Tim
Quitting drinking ten years ago.
Cole, I did not know there were any educated, middle class people in West Virginia.
Lolis
Yoga. It brings me so much joy and peace.
Also, too. Travel. Becoming fluent in Spanish. Living in one of the best places in the world, Mexico, for a year.
Frank Chow
@R-Jud: Might I suggest moving back when it’s a bit warmer? It’s friggin cold right now, unless of course you like that sort of thing.
It’s truly an inspiring city. The more the merrier!
trollhattan
@dweomer:
Dear lord, I’m so very, very sorry.
In that spirit, certainly it’s the birth of my daughter, redhead.edu. I frankly dreaded the whole thing and in return she’s merely changed my whole life for the better. Yes it’s all good, even when she’d pulling my chain (it’s in her job description, I checked).
My *luckiest* event was surviving a rollover down a levee bank in a ’64 Corvette convertible. Let’s give it up for lap belts.
John PM
The best thing for me was getting a full ride to the University of Chicago. Once there I started doing improv comedy and found that I was good at it. After graduation I started taking classes at Second City, where I ended up meeting my wife. Although I never made it as a professional actor, I always tell people that my acting career was a success because I met my wife.
Frank Chow
@aimai: The Reader is a fantastic paper and what a wonderfully unique story.
I actually just sent along your “take more risks” line to my lady. It is something we’ve both been weighing the last two months.
Jules
At this point in my life with a teenager, too many cats/dogs, not enough money and an underemployed depressed husband it is Welbutrin which keeps me from from telling them all to “fuck off” and taking off for a beach somewhere warm.
(and really it is my son who came late in our marriage and changed everything about us and our lives for the better.)
matoko_chan
wikileaks.
and Cataclysm.
Everett
As an 18-year old college freshman, applying for and being accepted to work on a trail crew at Philmont Scout Ranch. Three months later, I returned to Georgia from New Mexico a changed person. After spending three months in the woods, I finally understood that there was more to life than an engineering degree and suburbia, that there were alternatives to the drudgery middle-class materialism, and that I needed to find a path that would let me incorporate my concern for this Earth and all its residents into my professional life. It took a long time, I admit, but I did and I’m happy.
Eric S.
I know we’re not supposed to say parents but I’m going to be specific here. Growing up, Dad worked and early shift and was home several hours before Mom. Dad was an old union hand with a ridiculously strong work ethic. I don’t ever remember him taking a day off of work. Any way, he’d get home and my brother and I had a set time we had to be at the kitchen table doing our home work and we had to sit there until it was done. That work ethic and finishing a commitment wore off on both my brother and I.
sw
My mother-in-law, may she rest in peace. I’d been raised in a pretty passive-aggressive Irish Catholic family, I was aghast and fascinated at how comfortable with herself my MIL was 19 years ago when I met her. How direct she was with how she felt. She was also shrewd and brooked absolutely ZERO bullshit from me and was the first person to hold a mirror up to myself, calmly, firmly and lovingly. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, in fact there were times I bitterly resented her, but I needed it. Slowly I became more comfortable in my own skin and have been able to do things I never would have done without her attentions in this way. I’m a better person because of her in a lot of ways, but I never really got a chance to thank her before she died three years ago. Cheers, Sue.
Angry Black Lady
@mistermix: hear hear!
Omnes Omnibus
If wife or family are not allowed as answers, I will go with either my wife or growing up in a family that valued reading, learning, traveling, and thinking. So there.
Angry Black Lady
john, this was very louis ck. what a great bit.
BGinCHI
@aimai: You are Tina Fey, aren’t you.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
Jules
@J.R.:
JR, that little bit of TV made my bitter angry heart grow three sizes in about 2 minutes.
BGinCHI
@scav: I can walk there from our place. I love their stuff but don’t indulge too often.
Sorry to hear they’re hanging it up.
If I was rich I’d install them in my giant kitchen.
calling all toasters
Dropping out of the University of Chicago. If you’ve ever attended, you know what I mean.
Jules
Oh and our GP who caught my husband’s prostate cancer a few years ago and basically saved his life.
BGinCHI
@John PM: So get busy and write some funny posts, for fuck’s sake.
Cole desperately needs laughs.
Cliff
The Internet.
and Molly, she was/is a game changer.
I never would have done this this morning without her!
http://mollymaesden.blogspot.com/2010/12/brrrrrr.html
parenthetical
@Aaron S. Veenstra: Your comment could have ended after the first two words…
scav
@BGinCHI: and I would visit if you did so. And, like you, not often, but at critical moments. If we’re ever proved to be in the same building, I’m going to laugh.
Will
I got to play the role of Arturo Ui in Bertold Brecht’s The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui. The role is a combination of Richard III, Al Capone, and Adolf Hitler, all rolled into one, and the damn thing is also composed in iambic frickin’ pentameter. It was the most challenging experience of my life, and most likely the greatest and most rewarding.
Cain
The best thing that is happenign to me is happening right now.. GO BERNIE SANDERS!!! Bernie fillibustering… everything! Someone send that guy big kudos!
How come no front page story on this?! That is good news isn’t it?
cain
Cain
@asiangrrlMN:
Clearly there is not enough people who appreciates cleek’s wife.
cain
Gus
The LSD trip that blew my socks off and made me realize how small I and my piddling problems are.
Monty
The day I discovered running = Joy. The ability/capacity to let the mind go and be solitary (while joining with everything)…to feel just me, only me and reduce the outside world to nothing.
Inspiration to me is a moment of letting go, to become whatever it is inside you that makes you excellent. A moment of joyous discovery on becoming that ignores the self while embracing it.
Beginning at 1.39…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPB7r0UpNIE
So where does the power come from, to see the race to its end? [From within] I believe god made me for a purpose…but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.
Saw that movie when I was 12. Sure I’ve had other inspirational moments since then: the time the family dog scooched next to me, the first time I look into my lover’s eyes (not the dog), etc. Flashes of poetry.
CaptainFwiffo
I can’t think of anything that really stands out. Not that my life has sucked, but there’s not anything that sticks out as “the thing”. There have been some “fairly awesome” things. Like learning to play go is pretty cool, and once I got laid by a hot chick (a solid 8.5 and at least 3-4 points out of my league at the time). Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are pretty fucking good. Breaking up with my last girlfriend was pretty good, and I’m totally winning the breakup. But none of them stand out as “the best thing that ever happened to me”.
Some things are more life-shaping, but are double-edged swords (getting involved in computers at a young age).
Some people list disasters as positive things, because it changed the way they led their life… Most of my disasters are just negative (my parents’ divorce, my Dad’s cancer, getting involved in politics…)
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
I did something similar, but through a now-defunct Conde Nast website called Swoon. Went on 14 dates and married #14.
eir
Aside from birth family/circumstances, husband, and cat…
…realizing that it was perfectly okay to detest traditional female roles and still have a wonderfully fulfilling life.
I can’t stand kids (wouldn’t even want to care for a dog), and would be perfectly fine never having gotten married. I can sleep till noon on the weekends if I feel like it, I can come home from a long day of work and exercise, paint, play music, or just do nothing – and I don’t have to feel guilty about it.
So, I guess, meeting older single/childless women who are arguably happier than anyone else I’ve met.
zzyzx
This one is sad, but it’s true. September 2-3, 1988, the Grateful Dead @ the Capitol Centre. So much of my life over the next 22 years all goes down to that moment, of the people I met and the music I saw and how I would want to experience that again and again. So many friends I’ve met – hell my current wife for that matter – all came out of the fact that Jerry Garcia didn’t die from that coma in 1986…
Mnemosyne
@Cliff:
In that last picture, it looks like she’s holding her butt off the rock because it’s too cold to sit on. :-)
Cliff
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, Yes she was. (she had just got out from being under my jacket on my lap in preparation for the run home)
My breath was freezing on my eyelashes, and when I got home and took my shell off, the goretex hadn’t worked cause the vapor froze as snow before transpiring thru the membrane.
aka my shell was full of snow, my insulating layer was soaked, but still warm (yay synthetics) and my hat was also covered in ‘snow’ (condensed breath)
Batocchio
Not a best thing, I’ll have to think on that – but some good news: The City of Los Angeles is now donating all leftover food from city-sponsored events to local food banks, and working to coordinate donations. It’s much needed out here, and I was glad to hear some good news for a change.
Splendid One
As a young child I developed an untrained, incredibly fast reading and comprehension skill that has backed me up in situations ranging from advantages while taking printed standardized tests through staying current with reading assignments in graduate and law school. And now, with the Internet, I keep up so much more easily than people who read at normal speeds.
pk
My children. If I did not have them my life would be empty and completely meaningless. Trite but true.
Angela
@sw: That is beautiful!
Mothra
My family IS the best thing that ever happened to me, my husband, children, parents, and brother, but I have something else on my mind that I am very, very grateful for.
My father goes in next week for surgery for cancer. Over the last few months, he’s had chemotherapy, and now he will have his bladder removed and have reconstructive surgery that includes an ostomy bag. He’s had a difficult year, and this is a major surgery to recover from. But I’m so grateful that he’s being given a chance. I appreciate all of those who have done cancer research over these many decades, all of the medical professionals who go into these fields, and I appreciate that somebody – or rather a lot of somebodies- fought for Medicare and VA benefits.
So there. :) My Dad is being given a chance. It’s a blessing, to have hope.
Maody
I, too, can’t think of just one thing so here goes.
1.) getting sober almost 20 years ago therefore life could continue, I could stop hurting me and others and reenter the world.
2.) my late husband and living in Paris, France.
3.) growing up in the country in a big family no matter how many times each of us got left behind in some way or another – and that our parents were educated, kind, full of good values, art and fun and from West Virginia.
4.) being with people I love(d) when they died – this is a whole ‘nother weird thing, not that they died, but that I could be there.
5.) my oldest sister, phoebesmother
6.) that I am good at some stuff. I write a mean sestina.
7.) all my pets, past and present and the amazement and love they offer – and I offer back.
BGinCHI
@Maody: I demand a sestina.
And tomorrow a villanelle.
El Tiburon
@BGinCHI:
Absolutely. I discovered Doc Savage in a bookmobile.
Teak111
My dad putting me in private school, Villanova Prep, when I was headed for trouble. And while in my first year, a teacher taking me aside (because I was in trouble again) and talking to me like an adult, listening to my problems, then very kindly giving my an ultimatum, take this opportunity or continue fucking up. And I took it and it really made all the difference.
Also, the moment me and my crazy college girlfriend said yes to a pregnancy, that roller coaster rush of life in a moment of frightened joy.
cyntax
This is more of a connected set of things than one in particular: the love of travel and books that was kindled in me from an early age and not least because that’s how I met my wife.
(Ha! Thought I wasn’t going to go there, huh?)
BGinCHI
@El Tiburon: Go on. That sounds dirty.
I think my lingering desire to own an RV (Mrs. BG: No Fucking Way) stems from the Bookmobile. I would love to own a big Winnebago filled with books.
Wow, low fantasy bar for me.
OK, it would also have a wine cellar.
KDP
@Cain: You could always call his office in Vermont to say thank you. I just did, and she was very nice, asking where I was calling from and saying many middle class citizens have called saying they would rather let the tax cuts expire.
Svensker
There are some very interesting people here at Balloon Juice.
The best thing that ever happened to me was going to a tiny little podunk town in Georgia and meeting my husband, who was visiting there at the time, too. So much richness has flowed from that strange chance.
Although right now said husband is listening to the Archies sing Sugar Sugar for the 998th time and I would like to kill him. His taste in music is truly abominable.
Maody
@BGinCHI: okay.
Mahateh’s Sestina
Mahateh smelled of cinnamon
and cardamon and roses.
Her dress was ripped and worn
and hardly held her breasts
and wide hips, but she was close
to marrying her much loved man;
A love of a sultry Irish man
whose pants were the color of cinnamon.
In her teak chest she kept close
a painting of his lips like dusky roses,
her hope kept tightly to her breasts,
Mahateh’s fingers were so worn
Her furrowed head thought worn
watching a yard acclimate the man
while he watched robins’ breasts
puff and fall in reds and cinnamon
beside Mahateh’s glorious roses
and silently the gate his hands close.
He walks up simmeringly close
and picks up her very favorite worn
shawl bedecked with black roses
Mahateh stole a moment, asked the man
to eat soup of winter squash and cinnamon
across the table touched heads and breasts
Her oven opened to duck breasts
her carving block blood soaked close
His chin drenched with cinnamon
the tablecloth finally well worn
by the forearms and elbows of the man
Mahateh’s thoughts were only roses
His tongue found orange drop roses
at the center of her long lost breasts
fifteen years untouched by a man
her mind went blank at the close
of a day simply loved and worn
secret cloth stained with cinnamon
Mahateh’s favorite man picked her roses
Precious wild cinnamon adorned her breasts
Each breath close and proudly worn
© 2010
ruemara
I forgot books. Friends, lovers, refuge, school, hope, everything. If I have to give up my home, I will find them a place as much as I have to find my kitty a place. My world wouldn’t be the same without literacy.
BGinCHI
@Maody: Lovely, lovely, lovely.
Thanks for that.
Unpublished?
Maody
@BGinCHI: Thanks for reading it. I have a book submitted that is being considered and should know something by January or February. oh please, oh please that might be the best thing EVAH!
BGinCHI
@Maody: I wish you luck. I have published exactly one poem, though I was fortunate to have it nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Look forward to the villanelle.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Bill H.: I wonder if you served with my dad? He was on the Gudgeon, Tiru, and Clamagore in the 60s. I spent a lot of time as a kid doing homework in various wardrooms.
bago
Deciding that machines make more sense than people.
Back to working on Global Traffic Management for cloud computing.
Maody
@BGinCHI: congrats on your poem! i’ve never written a villanelle, no Dylan Thomas here… but I can try, but Cole will have to have another good news thread for me to post it in. hint hint JC. more of these in hard times is good.
KDP
@ruemara: Yes, books have always been a sanctuary for me. Reading is as necessary to my mental and spiritual life as eating or breathing are to my physical life.
Janet
@donnah:
Gutcheon?
Constance
1. My son grew up happy.
2. My husband
3. Plumbing, Libraries, and Modern Dentistry, which = Civilization
4. Dogs and cats in my life
5. John and Lily Cole
John PM
@calling all toasters: #231.
Apparently you and I had very different experiences at University of Chicago. I am guessing that you graduated at or near the same time as David Brooks. I have met a lot of disgruntled alumni from the 1970s and 1980s, which appears to have been the University’s low-water mark.
John PM
@BGinCHI: #233.
Thank you for the trip down memory lane, when my statement that I was an improviser would invariably be followed by someone responding: “Say something funny!”
LT
I’m hoping the best thing that ever happens to me starts Monday – when I move to Australia (from the U.S.). The Moon is upside down from there, y’know.
Erikthe Red
I’m with ya on the Army, John. It was one of the best decisions I ever made for myself, too.
Aside from that, I’d say first meeting my two little twin babies followed by buying my first home.
Maody
@LT: and the water goes backwards down the drain.
bemused
There’s no way I could pick just one best thing that ever happened to me. Right now I am in cozy warm house looking out our windows at the perfect snow buried trees Christmas card scene and we will soon be eating homemade spaghetti sauce and garlic bread while our dogs will be watching us hopefully for some leftover tidbits. They adore spaghetti nights.
I hate overly sentimental, hearts and flowers, gooey sweet, trite greeting cards, movies, testimonials, etc but to me all the small epiphanies/joys are as important to notice as the biggies.
LT
@Maody: Yeah, that one’s actually a myth. A fun one, but a myth.
BGinCHI
@Maody: And if the movies are correct they carry very big knives.
Oh, and vegemite. Don’t eat it.
Joan
@Capri:
I hope you see this.
Sometime Tuesday night, one of my cats encountered a porcupine. I didn’t find the cat until Wednesday evening, so the quills were imbedded a long time.
I managed to pull out 7 before the cat and I had had all we could take.
A local retired vet came out of retirement at 8:00 pm on Wednesday night to sedate the cat and pull out the rest. He charged me $50.
In a fairly long life, I’ve witnesses numerous acts of kindness, but this was far, far and away the kindest.
The kitty — a big, sweet-tempered orange shorthair — is slowly recovering from this dreadful experience. At this moment he’s upstairs, asleep on my bed.
And I’m downstairs, typing this and crying, so grateful to a vet for such an act of mercy.
Joan
@Capri:
I hope you see this.
Sometime Tuesday night, one of my cats encountered a porcupine. I didn’t find the cat until Wednesday evening, so the quills were imbedded a long time.
I managed to pull out 7 before the cat and I had had all we could take.
A local retired vet came out of retirement at 8:00 pm on Wednesday night to sedate the cat and pull out the rest. He charged me $50.
In a fairly long life, I’ve witnesses numerous acts of kindness, but this was far, far and away the kindest.
The kitty — a big, sweet-tempered orange shorthair — is slowly recovering from this dreadful experience. At this moment he’s upstairs, asleep on my bed.
And I’m downstairs, typing this and crying, so grateful to a vet for such an act of mercy.
Joan
@Capri:
I hope you see this.
Sometime Tuesday night, one of my cats encountered a porcupine. I didn’t find the cat until Wednesday evening, so the quills were imbedded a long time.
I managed to pull out 7 before the cat and I had had all we could take.
A local retired vet came out of retirement at 8:00 pm on Wednesday night to sedate the cat and pull out the rest. He charged me $50.
In a fairly long life, I’ve witnesses numerous acts of kindness, but this was far, far and away the kindest.
The kitty — a big, sweet-tempered orange shorthair — is slowly recovering from this dreadful experience. At this moment he’s upstairs, asleep on my bed.
And I’m downstairs, typing this and crying, so grateful to a vet for such an act of mercy.
Maody
@BGinCHI: had an Aussie gal pal in Paris whose parents used to send her Vegemite – oh my god is that stuff made of seaweed and sludge or what? best used for glue.
@LT: oh damn, thought the water whirlpool coolness was true. i am bereft.
Jeremy
The best thing that’s ever happened to me?
A strange woman I’d just met at a club pulled me into the ladies bathroom, sprinkled coke on her cleavage and encouraged me to rip it right up.
I did.
Erikthe Red
As a lighter (and more recent) example, successfully learning my first complete bass line: Hells Bells.
LT
@BGinCHI: I love Vegemite. I must need salt.
Just Some Fuckhead
Birth, it’s all been downhill from there. Hah.
Nah, just kidding. I won an Eddie Money album from a radio contest in the early 80s. An actual LP! I didn’t have a record player but it melted in the back window of my Pontiac Starfire anyway.
Tim P.
Taking contemporary moral issues as a freshman journalism major.. it prompted me to change my major to philosophy, the study of which has alternately calmed, infuriated, depressed and ultimately given me a sense of detached but humane ironism that provides me with good reasons (in my view) to continue living and engaging in life’s back-and-forths.
Erikthe Red
@bemused:
I’m just happy to have my own warm domicile in weather like this. Somehow it just feels better in your own house even if an apartment can be just as warm.
JCT
@John PM: This made me laugh — I was one of those folks who *almost* went to UChicago in 1980, but it was kind of a dreary place and Cal gave me a free ride, in the end one of my best decisions ever. Having said that, my oldest is a junior at UChicago now and adores it.
So my best things? OK, besides my kids who center my life and keep the world at bay and my pets who make me smile and cheer me up.
The best thing is my beloved husband getting his leukemia into remission this past summer — almost lost him, makes me sick to even contemplate it — we’re not done growing old together yet and he promised me that.
Correlate to that is our renewed outlook and career goals — looks like we might make a huge career move soon, have to see if we have the nerve.
WyldPirate
@Maody:
Vegamite is made out of yeast and salt. It tastes a lot like a dried out agar plate containing yeast extract used for growing microorganisms or fruit flies in the lab.
Nasty shit, but very nutritious.
BGinCHI
@Just Some Fuckhead: I thought you had a Monza!
Uriel
Honestly? Having my dad attack me with a hunting knife. Because that, and it’s aftermath, finally put me in a place where I gave myself permission to reevaluate our relationship critically rather than through the lens of sentiment. Absent that, I may have never realized that alot of the crap I thought was cool about him- feeding us drugs and booze from toddlership, relentlessly exposing us to pron and other stuf wildly beyond or age level, constantly dogging our mom to prove he was our pal, and endangering our lives in search of thrills over and over- all these things were not only not cool, but seriously fucking wrong. Evil, even.
I could never have been the person or father I am (which is not great, but serviceable), had I not been forced into that realization.
BGinCHI
@WyldPirate: Gosh, try as I might, I can’t think of anything else that tastes like yeast and salt.
JPL
John, Thanks! This blog made me smile and I so enjoyed reading all the posts.
There’s almost 300 comments and it’s not even a blog war. Nice!
BGinCHI
Click over to HuffPo and read the headline and then what it says under Sanders’ picture.
You will want to murder the lot of them.
Maody
@BGinCHI: wipe that salty grin off your face.
Maody
@BGinCHI: it’s obviously all about her, no doubt. jesus h christ on a stick, she needs to get over herself.
BGinCHI
@Maody: And there’s the first line of your villanelle.
BGinCHI
@Maody: They’ve also had all these stories on divorce lately. It’s like the View but without the anxiety.
Maody
@BGinCHI: most excellent salty piratey kind of villanelle. oh boy! as to entertainment tonight arianna dot com, well…
huffpo could have been somebody.
Jim, Once
@JMC in the ATL:
My experience exactly! I so resisted using the machine – couldn’t get to sleep with it when I first started using it, had the wrong size mask , etc., etc. Just about everything that could wrong, did. Then, one night, I went to sleep, slept all night, and when I woke, realized that this is what people are supposed to feel like after a true night’s rest. It’s been all good ever since – even brought my dangerously high blood pressure waaay down.
Jim, Once
@Maody:
Oh my. That is so beautiful. I am without words
Pete
I was born white, male and middle class in Apartheid South Africa. With enough English heritage to get me the fuck out of there in 1990.
Also I got to travel and enjoy 20 different countries in 2001/2002. That was pretty shitting awesome.
master c
@sw:
like this.
Sue
Montysano
Just back from a week of business travel, so I’m late to the party.
My best thing? In 1977 I had dropped out of Purdue in my junior year, due to a lack of money. I was back home in southern Indiana, working as a farmhand.
Suddenly, through a bizarre set of circumstances (and friends of friends of friends, etc), I found myself working as a guitar tech (i.e. roadie) for the band Kansas. To my poor parents, I might as well have run off and joined the circus. But from this one seemingly inconsequential friendship, I traveled the world, destroyed many brain cells, had much fun, and met my future wife. Without that bit of serendipity…. ???
BGinCHI
@Montysano: You need to write about that, my friend. That’s a great story.
Rural IN boy here, who went to PU then off to many other places and degrees and so on. Good place to grow up but getting out was the essential thing.
WyldPirate
@BGinCHI:
Head cheese? Nut butter? ;)
Cheryl from Maryland
Having Emma Peel to be my role model. Reading P.G. Wodehouse as a teen with my dad. Ice skating — I like to think that is how a bird feels when flying.
BGinCHI
@WyldPirate: You’re getting warmer.
WyldPirate
@Montysano:
Loved and still love Kansas. I’m a little odd in that their most popular tunes were not my most favorite. If I had to choose, “Apercu” and “Death of Mother Nature Suite” would be my faves.
I bet those were interesting times, Monysano.
master c
Gotta do a list….in no particular order
Moving to Houston for a job and meeting my husband
Going to an all-girl Catholic school
Growing up with my brother
My Grandmother’s house
My year in London
Taking and then leaving a corporate job
Wanting and getting a boy and girl of my own.
Chris
I met Jimmy Page at a bus stop.
When I was 12, I was a Led Zeppelin obsessive in the Chicago burbs. Took up guitar, grew up, got hipper, and really deep into music, left Zep behind where it belonged.
Saw him on the street in London, pushing my 6 month old boy, he couldn’t have been cooler, my brain became 12 again and here was a living God on earth. Had a great chat, really suprised me what that did to my brain but my internal 12 yr old was really mind blown.
Suzan
Being raised as a rationalist (aka atheist) so I guess that means my mom. When I said one day, as a child, “but everyone believes in God, that must mean he exists.” She answered: “just because everyone believes in something doesn’t make it true.” Best lesson of my life. Question everything, especially authority. She’s 86 and a huge Jon Stewart and Bill Maher fan. Lucky me.
WyldPirate
@BGinCHI:
haha…nah. never thought that tasted like vegamite. never was much for going there when it was marinated w/o a bath for several days though, so I could be wrong.
Just Some Fuckhead
@WyldPirate: Kerry Livgren is a Republican now and one of Sam Brownback’s best buddies.
maye
Someone left a baby on my doorstep. He’s now 15 and still the sunshine of my life.
Console
My job was the best thing to happen to me. I mean it’s funny because the training is hard and demoralizing and easily one of the worst experiences of any air traffic controller’s life. But the pay is great, no 2 days are alike, it’s a career, and it’s actually fun. Not too many jobs provide adrenaline rushes without requiring you to put your own life at risk. Nothing like it.
Mister Papercut
Very late to this party, but the best thing that ever happened to me, so far, has been my cat. Like all great love stories, it almost didn’t happen, and he has been my heart for over 13 years now.
WyldPirate
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Damn, that’s just sad. I knew Livgren caught the Jeebus bug, but that’s pretty bad. Brownback?
Just Some Fuckhead
@WyldPirate: File it under people will disappoint you every fucking time.
asiangrrlMN
@Maody: That’s beautiful. I love sestinas. I wrote one once, but on a less lovely topic.
Thank you all for this thread. It really made my day.
Gus
Holy shit, Maody, you do wire a mean sestina!
Lizzy
Being able to paint again, after a long hiatus. Painting the Lily’s, Tunch’s and Rosie’s of my life.
calling all toasters
@John PM: Low-water mark? I don’t think there’s water in hell. But, yes, late 70s for me. I will concede that three decades of constant improvement would probably bring it up to Abu Ghraib level, maybe even shithole.
Maody
@Jim, Once:
@asiangrrlMN: @Gus:
thanks y’all.
@Cheryl from Maryland:
THIS x 10. used to ice skate. our dad bought me a pair of brown hockey skates when i was 6. we had two ponds that invariably froze over enough to skate. it is like flying. then i discovered figure skates – wwwwowwww!
Chuck Butcher
Hmmmm, a bit interconnected. Working a Hot Shot crew (also took me out of Ohio), quitting college and the BSME/CE in ’77 for the construction that was paying for it. Getting clean and sober in ’88 still alive with no excuse for it which led to all the good family stuff.
My dogs over the years, eating food, Harley Davidson
Annie
In the 70s when I was in college, I went to my Professor to beg for extra time to complete a paper. She asked what I was doing for the summer. I said that I would work in Pittsburgh, probably running errands in the courthouse — a job my father would get for me as I wanted to go to law school. She asked if I would like to go to Afghanistan instead. Gee — Pittsburgh or Afghanistan. I said Afghanistan, of course, because I had never been outside the US. Well, the summer fellowship was awesome. I came back to Pitt, finished college and went on to graduate school in international development. Screw law school. It changed my life. Two years in the Peace Corps after grad school and then a life working abroad in development. Now teaching the next generation. Not too bad.
Maody
sorry if this doubles… stuck in moderation above.
@Jim, Once:
@asiangrrlMN: @Gus:
thanks y’all.
@Cheryl from Maryland:
THIS x 10. used to ice skate. our dad bought me a pair of brown hockey skates when i was 6. we had two ponds that invariably froze over enough to skate. it is like flying. then i discovered figure skates – wwwwowwww!
Lavocat
Three naked sorority girls, lots of liquor, and an industrial vacuum cleaner.
And life was never again the same. Thank you God.
THE
Losing my religion. Becoming an atheist.
Getting all that crap out of my head finally.
Understanding that I am a mortal finite man.
No more.
No less.
mslarry
late response here… but in my defense it’s only 9pm on the west coast… the best thing? can’t narrow it down to one so i’ll go w/a list
#1) this will sound strange, but my dad’s death… though it was awful and soul crushing, the grief led me to therapy, which led me to relief, help, medication and the realization that “yes, virginia, black girls can be bulimics”… all of which led to help. I’ve been binge and purge free for five glorious years now. It was my beloved dad’s final gift to me.
#2)Growing up in Park Slope BKLYN in the late 80s and early 90s BEFORE it was a hipster paradise. But, at a time when it was still filled with seekers who wanted their children to learn and grow, not simply consume.
#3) Growing up in NYC in the 80s and 90s and having a front row seat to the nascent movement that became hip-hop. I saw the Wu-tang Clan live in a small club when I was 17… For those of you that understand the “movement”, the significance can’t be lost on you.
#4) Taking the full scholarship to Syracuse University when everyone encouraged me to attend Cornell, although they’d given me shit. Studying @ the same school where Joyce Carol Oates had once roamed the halls and Tobias Wolfe taught, gave me the confidence to pursue writing, as an, actual career.
#5) At the age of 20, deciding to date “outside of my race” and experience other cultures… though I’m still single, I’m the rare black girl who can make harizza from scratch, who at the same time has the ability to make gram masala. Meeting and dating men who weren’t like me (of black and puerto rican extraction), for the first time in my life I was able to understand, in a true way, what it means to be American.
#6) Traveling– see #5, getting out of America led me to my political beliefs and acceptance.
#7) Judy Blume, my love of her books contributed to my love of writing.
#8) this may sound strange given the current climate but Barack Hussein Obama, whether he fails or succeeds, his existence validates everything I’ve worked for as a black woman in America.
Montysano
@Just Some Fuckhead:
The whole band was very right wing, and when around friends and crew, openly racist. But a helluva powerful live band. Four years and 250 shows, and I never got tired of it.
I left shortly after Dave Hope and Kerry caught the Jesus Fire; you could tell that nothing good was gonna come from it.
Betty Cracker
A friend whose first name starts with an “A.” She and I met on a road trip with several others to attend the funeral of a mutual friend who had died way too young (AIDS). We were both going through a rough time in our lives (bad break-ups, soul-sucking jobs, etc.).
We discovered we lived pretty close to each other and shared many common interests, including binge-drinking, a fondness for books and writing, insomnia and the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. (Hey, it cheered us up and provided role models.) We helped each other get through a tough time.
Anyway, through A I met my future husband. A met her future husband, an old college pal of mine, at my wedding. Several children ensued, and we all lived, if not happily ever after, happily enough. I should give A a call. It’s been too long…
SCarolina
The blessings in my life are my son, my dog Penny who I miss terribly, my grandchildren and my Aunt Faye in Marblehead, MA. Also the Hershey Chocolate Factory – we grew up in Harrisburg and went there multiple times. I took my son while you could tour the actual factory and see how the chocolate was made. Last time I went it was a silly ride and I cried for what was. I recently heard they are moving the chocolate factory out of Hershey. How sad.