Sliding door moments and wasted lives

[Four Cofffee]

My sister has been really ill of late which has got me thinking about her more often and in more depth than perhps I had in the previous 40 years. I look at her life and wonder how things could have been so different in a sliding door kind of way.

Because I left home and left the area quite young we didn't really hang out as teenagers or young adults. I have recently realised that she is an intelligent, witty, down to earth woman, a decent mother whose life couild have been so differnt save for a few key moments and decisions. She left school at 16 to a factory job, met some layabout (key moment), let him move in (key moment) stayed with him when he hit her (key moment) had 3 kids and has spent her life on benefits with him. Layout died at 47 (key moment) and she got her first job since the age of 19, but she has spent 35 years smoking which has made her housebound and disabled at 47 (and having to give up the job she got after he died). Looking at her life, with the exception of 2 very decent kids and one father-like waster kid her life has frankly been wqsted and at 47 she is really waiting to die.

This was reinforced last night when my wife was waxing lyrical about the teachers at school she went to when her brother, now also a teacher pointed out that almost all the kids left at that time with no qualifications, and yet a group of his friends from the school had gone on to get degrees through the OU, a PhD, work in the city and be senior managers in financial services and the fire and rescue service. It really seems that these people have reached some of their potential depite the crap schooling ( although I am guessing they could have done it earlier had they had teachers who gave a stuff). What about all those kids who didn't? What if Mum had sent them to the other school half a mile further up the road?

I have had similar sliding door moments, some good, some bad. Leaving school at 16 (not sensible), joining the police at 18, buying my own house at 21, doing an OU degree, shagging that blonde. They are all decisons and things, which had they gone one way or the other could have led me somewhere very different.

So, what are your sliding door moments?

[Asterix]

Hate to say it but all my sliding door moments have been for the good (touches wood!)- I'm one to grasp the nettle and give stuff a try and so far it has worked out well and had what I consider to be an interesting life.

Perhaps it was because I left school at 16 without any quals that I've had to operate this way?