Bestwifeever
Moderator Emeritus
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2007
- Messages
- 17,774
I am in the going away to college and away from home camp, halfway across the country. I shudder to think of my own "It's a Wonderful Life" scenario, if I had not done that.
+1I honestly can't say which of the 24,842 days (and counting) was most important. I could select a handful that I'd rank way up there but no way can I single out any one day.
That is the average lifespan in the United States today: 27,375 days. If you are typical, that is what was deposited in your “time bank” when you were born. Every day, whether or not you want to, you make a withdrawal of 1 day. When the days run out, you die. Game over.
For the folks that point to the birth of a son or daughter...wasn't the important event about 9 months earlier?
I don't get it. What does "..." mean? Details, please.
For the folks that point to the birth of a son or daughter...wasn't the important event about 9 months earlier?
For me, it would be the first day of a vacation to Montana and Yellowstone in the summer of 1992.
My family was never the outdoor type, so after I'd moved out on my own, that summer I decided I wanted to visit a national park. I picked Yellowstone and few in to Billings, Montana. After I picked up my rental car and started driving towards the mountains, I knew immediately why they call it Big Sky Country.
It was like the entire world opened up to me. The wide open spaces, the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone...
I still consider that trip to be the single most important life-changing event in my life. It caused me to move sight unseen to Colorado later that year, and I still feel drawn more to Colorado and the Rockies than anywhere else I've ever lived.
For me, it was the day I finally had the courage to first tell someone that I'm gay. All of these many years later, it's hard to believe how difficult it was at the time.
OK, I'm going in a very different direction, here. I would argue that the one event that I can peg most of my life history to is a day in a General Music class in 9th grade. (Back in the day when public schools offered General Music classes.)
On this day, Mr. Chamberlain played the Bach "Little" G minor fugue. Until then I hadn't really had any interest in music and certainly no interest in (or even awareness of) "classical" music. After that day, I started checking classical LPs out of the school and public libraries and soon decided that whatever direction my life was headed it had to include classical music. This clearly meant that I would have to leave my hometown.
So, when I went away to university, even though I was a Physics major, I took Music History classes and attended classical music concerts. I met my future DW and was able to converse with her, because she, too, enjoyed classical music. Our dates centered around opera and concerts. She encouraged me to join the university chorus with her. We bought our first harpsichord just after graduating college with what was very nearly our last $300. I taught myself to play the recorder, the baroque flute, and the harpsichord.
So, for nearly every day of the last 40+ years of my life, classical music has been a part of it. Performing it, listening to it, reading about it. I can't imagine how my life would have been without this at the center of it.